Violin Forum/Message Board

[Michael Darnton]

kjb, the best thing I did for my violin making was give up the silly conceit that I was too good for templates. The first templates I used were from the Cannone del Gesu, by flipping the halves of the templates to make a new template that was as perfect an average as I could make, and that was by far my best violin up to that point. Next, I redid the cross arches based on cycloids, as written about by Quentin Playfair, and that was my best violin up to that point. Then I figured out how to reconstruct plausible long arches, and that was my best violin up to that point, by a huge jump, again. Each level of improvement was NOT tiny.

Christopher J, think of the real world: architecture almost always trumps materials. You lay eggs on their sides rather than their ends because their architecture demands it. They build bridges and buildings by designing the shapes first, not by putting up a random structure and then throwing more metal where it looks too weak. The most fundamental rule of design is "form follows function". There might as well be another rule--form defines behavior. You can do tortuous things against it, but they aren't efficient and they don't function as well as things that follow the rules. Why should violins be an exception among mechanical objects?

Here's another thought: what's the enemy of a good-sounding violin? Chaos, which equals or produces non-musical noise. The parts need to work together quickly and efficiently. If they're all trying to do something different, everything from response to purity of sound and core suffers. What's the best way to make them work together? Make them all function according to similar rules. This for me is the beauty of cycloid cross-arches--it defines the whole shape according to one mathematical function. The cross arches all look different, but the way they change is the way the function itself changes with different parameters: more full to the edges when high and narrow, more serpentine when low and wide. In an esoteric way, they're all the same curve. How much more elegant and coordinated could you do it? Think it happened by mistake or by eye logic? Then why, of all the historical schools did ONLY the Cremonese school arrive at that "logical" solution, and all of the others didn't?

[jacobyfineviolins]

Wow. You've focused all of what makes me so grateful to be doing this work, there!
Beauty in form and excellence in function are the same end goal, not separate arms of the craft. And the more I understand, the more that opens up to be explore.
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[kjb]

thanks that is a big help.

[actonern]

I have found this free software an excellent and easy to use method of getting good cross arches.

The download comes with a word file that explains what all the columns mean... you just plug in the numbers for your particular instrument and the computer does the rest. It's really good...

http://jpschmidtviolins.com/cycloid.html

[Michael Darnton]

Another group of software, what I use, is here:
http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~smann/ccycloid/
The java version is fun.

It's interesting to use the software, because you get to see the types of changes cycloids go through as they're changed.

I didn't mention it in my previous posting, but cycloids fit Cremonese violins extremely well--better than one could come up with by coincidence by eye, in my opinion. Mess with the software and you can see some very subtle things going on. The online java version is fun for this.
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[kjb]

I will try a photo

here a photo of the long arch, if you can see it well enough. am I sort of in the ballpark, or way off? thanks

http://s254.beta.photobucket.com/user/kjbllc/media/DSCF0013-2.jpg.html

[Michael Darnton]

To me, both arches look almost pointy, definitely lean at the ends. I don't think you can change it much, nor do I think you should worry too much about it. It's not the perfect form, but I don't hate it, either.
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[actonern]

Michael;

Using Mr. Bein's "predict the sound from the arch shape" idea, what type of sound would you expect (in broad terms) the long arch you're seeing here to sound like?

Is that a fair question?

E

[Michael Darnton]

I'm not as good as him. :-) I might think it would be a little hard, a little bright, a little lacking in friendly response. But good core, loud, clear.

Maybe. :-)
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[kjb]

[DBurns]

[quote="Michael Darnton"]Next, I redid the cross arches based on cycloids, as written about by Quentin Playfair, and that was my best violin up to that point. Then I figured out how to reconstruct plausible long arches, and that was my best violin up to that point, by a huge jump, again. Each level of improvement was NOT tiny.[/quote]

Think it happened by mistake or by eye logic? Then why, of all the historical schools did ONLY the Cremonese school arrive at that "logical" solution, and all of the others didn't?
=================================

How do you make the long arches?
Using Curtate Cycloids?

[Michael Darnton]

On Cremonese violins the back appears to have been a precise circle in the more careful makers. I have a 1080mm radius circle template that fits most of the back illustrations in the Biddulph del Gesu exhibition books almost exactly, except for at the post, where the post has pooched them out.

The top is a bit more complex, but still based on one large circle.
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[kjb]

[Michael Darnton]

There's a lot of internal evidence that the first violin was essentially a clever drafting job, and that the method was passed on for about 200 years in Cremona, virtually unchanged, then forgotten. Cremonese violins are more alike than different, and very much different from other schools. If you're familiar with the basic rules, you can watch del Gesu progressively abandon some of the concepts in a relatively harmless way by developing new rules based on the old ones, then the later Bergonzi family members seem to forget it all, each generation wandering farther off the path, until the bushes take over.

There's a very longstanding legend that Leonardo da Vinci designed the violin, and some evidence that there were violin makers in Florence pre-dating Andrea Amati, working at the same time as Leonardo, but no surviving instrument from them, just some uncertain documents.
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[kjb]

I see, that makes sense,

do you think that the clever drafting job , was about the things that were going on at the time, such as the math, cycloids the golden measure, a kind of a joining of peoples ideas from different areas and adapting them to the particular specialty they were working on ?