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Stradivarius violins are renowned for their supposedly superior sound when compared to other instruments. This has resulted in numerous studies hunting for a scientific reason for why Strads sound so good. A number of these studies have focused on the chemical composition of the wood in violins made in Cremona by Antonio Stradivari in the 17th and 18th centuries. Others have considered the violins made by Stradivari's contemporary, Joseph Guarneri del Gesu, whose violins are widely considered to be just as good.
Research often looks at how the materials used in the construction of the instrument define its superior quality. For example, one study argued that a "little ice age" which affected Europe from 1645 to 1715, was responsible for the slow-growth wood used in the construction of the violins that gives them a particular quality. This type of wood would have been available to all violin makers in Europe so other work has looked at the particular varnish applied to Strads. But the most recent study on this showed that Stradivari finishes were also commonly used by other craftsmen and artists and were not particularly special.
Now a team of scientists from National Taiwan University have tried to uncover the secret of Stradivarius violins by analysing the chemistry of the wood they're made from. The researchers found that the aged and treated maple wood had very different properties from that used to make modern instruments. But is there really a secret to be found in the Stradivarius?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday December 22 2016, @03:07AM
People often ask how to sound like Eddie Van Halen or Eric Johnson when playing guitar. They think it's the guitar, the tone settings, the effects pedals. Those are an inconsequential part of sounding like a particular rockstar.
If you want to sound like a rockstar, you have to play like them, and there're a million different subtitles just in the touch technique alone -- width and speed of vibrato, when they prefer to pick and when they prefer to hammer-on, which scales and modes they like to use, do they jump in big intervals often and which intervals are frequently used, angle of the fingertips, sloppiness of the picking, upstrokes vs. downstrokes, do they pick from the wrist or elbow or even anchor with their pinky and play with the finger-joints (like Zappa). All that is much harder to learn, and much much harder to teach, compared to just setting up your tone and effects-pedals.
Back to the Eric Johnson example, you can see what I mean when he plays both Strats and ES-335's live and sounds exactly the same playing both.