UNDERSTANDING THE SOUND

  
Before start talking about bows, it  is imperative to be more precise about one  thing. The sound of each instrument, i.e. That one which distinguish it,  does not come neither from the instrument, nor from the bow, but rather from his Soul.  If an instrumentalist  has a beautiful sound, it will remain the same  even using instruments and bows of poor quality, obviously  if he uses excellent ones , the result will not certainly be worse!

M° Oleksandr Semchuk
 
If we try to understand what are the sound  potential of a bow, without  incurring in any  mistake, we must remain firmly clinging to the scientific method and rational logic. As mentioned last week talking about hi-fi, the sound of the instruments is subject to the same rules, furthermore, in this case,  both  listed  problems,  merge. 

To begin with I would say that  it would be necessary to use a proper terminology, speaking of sound in general is often very simplistic. The sound is composed of what are called the "forming characteristics, namely: Power, Definition, Color. The problem of how to establish  these features in a correct wayu, may be  easily explained with this sentence  I borrow from Brian Eno, composer and genius of the music industry of the last century, which produced some of the finest records by  U2: "Playing  music and listening  to it are   very different things, and nobody can do them well at the same time . "

Naturally, when musicians play, they listen to what comes out, the problem is from which  point? As you can see in the opening  picture , when  the performer  plays, he enjoy a so-called  non-privileged position, because his ear is placed  directly on the instrument, then he hears  something vaguely similar to what a  listener in the room can perceive.  Furthermore, it  is true that the musicians know the sound of natural instruments, I would add that they  know two of them, their own one and and that of the others. When you listen  someone playing, the forming characteristics of the sound obviously  interact with the environment in which they are played thus being affected  by it, and what you hear  as a listener  will surely be different from what the performer perceives. Simone explained us  (SPEED 'OF SOUND, RESONANCE AND BOWMAKING),that  the frequency responses of the instruments are not linear, but tend to decrease  at high frequencies. The explanation for this phenomenon is that the sound, whether produced or reproduced, suffers a  depression of  six Decibel (dBSPL: size unit for  amplitude, or volume), every ten meters in case of high frequencies. No coincidence that most musicians like the smooth  and silky sound , similar to what they  might have heard listening to the great soloists, but the soloists did not hear that sound, but another one , so if you anxious to play an  effect as being heard  in the hall, you  certainly incur in an  error.  
When you test  a bow, you can determine how it works mechanically, but you will not be  able to  understand what is its  sound  until you hear it form a  distance of 20-30 meters.

The Power: The sound volume is closely linked to the quality of material and the weight of the bow. We take a violin bow as a  reference. If you have two bows, built with the same materials, with a weight of  59 gr.,   62 gr. and under the ear  they have more or less the same volume, when you will  hear them  in a hall,  the  sound of the heavier one will fade away much faster than the other one as much as you go farther the listening point. This  happens because the heavy one produces its sound quantity  with the static mass, while the other  one is emitted by  the tension of the fibers. And already and thoroughly mentioned, by increasing the speed of sound, also  the resonant frequency of the material increases, allowing it to produce a higher  harmonics quantity in comparison with the other one . So to determine the volume of a bow, get a scale  and especially listen to it  from a distance.

The Definition: or  sharpness, is the only parameter that you can perceive by  playing the instrument, although you should be careful to what you really hear. Some years ago I  had  a discussion with a friend, a  hghly talented violinist. He had found a bow somewhere, and deceived by a beautiful sound, he was convinced that it was mechanically excellent. In reality he is a great instrumentalist , and manages to  playing practically everything, but watching it, I understood that the bow  was a very low quality. To prove that  he was right, he started playing very technical steps of a Paganini capriccio. Obviously the notes could be heard, but I knew that his performance could be improved with  a good bow. At this point I took got one of our bow  and I asked him to do the same piece once again. There was no need to say anything,  at  the second quadruplet  the corners of his mouth were raised into a slight smile that betrayed him, giving me reason... inexorably. Try  if you can, to close  your mind and  open your ears  when you test  a new bow, and above all  devote one parameter at a time. Before the sharpness and after it ...
 
The Color: is the most trcky and difficult parameter in  order to detect  the sound. To determine what color  the voice of a bow  is, it is  imperative to  hear it played at a distance, and the reason is very simple. We  take two bows as sual , a new and an old  one. When you  play them, it  will be very likely that the old bow has a very smooth  sound, the other one , just  because the fibers are very tense and stimulate higher harmonics than  the first  one,  will be a little stiffer. But if you come off the violin and you let it play by another person , as in power when you move away from the emission point, the color of modern bow  will tend to soften, while the color of  the ancient bow will tend to  disappear. The reason is due to the fact that usually the ancient bows have been  playing for a long time , and as you know, the bow is a shock absorber  and tends to  wind down. So even if the curve is in  a good state, the bow  will not be able to stimulate the high harmonics, and as explained above, by moving  away from the execution point,   we will get a strong  decrease at high frequencies.   The absorption of space and time stamp will cause that the sound you hear as smooth while playing will tend to disappear and become  more and more confused, while  the other  one will arrive as  soft, strong and defined.

I hope I did not dwelt too much, and considering the complexity and vastness of the subject I would like to be contacted by anyone who has any questions or wants to start a discussion on the topic. I will publish on the blog, both the demand and reply, so  to make this topic as  clear as possible.

So long

Paolo
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