151st ASA Meeting, Providence, RI


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Studying Violin Bowing

Diana Young - young@media.mit.edu
E15-443g
Media Laboratory
MIT
Cambridge, MA 02142

Popular version of paper 5aMU12
Presented Friday morning, June 9th, 2006
151st ASA Meeting, Providence, RI

The violin is widely recognized as one of the most difficult musical instruments to play. Fortunately for those who persevere through years and even decades of difficult training, it is also considered to be one of the most rewarding. Students of the violin, as well as those who play viola, cello, and double bass, must acquire proficiency in techniques for left hand (fingering) and right hand (bowing) that are completely different from each other, and then they must learn to precisely coordinate the two.

Though the left hand presents many challenges to a developing violinist, it is generally agreed that greater difficulties are encountered while mastering bowing. Like a singer's breath, it is the movement of the bow that provides the loudness and duration of the notes, as well as the articulations that distinguish different musical expressions. Indeed, it can take months or years for a new student to achieve a so-called "good tone" on an open (unfingered) string. This seemingly simple task is a subtle negotiation between the speed with which the bow is drawn, the force applied to the string, and the distance between the bow and the bridge of the instrument. The interaction of these three primary bowing parameters is a topic of interest for many researchers working in bowed string acoustics, but there have been few studies involving real bowing parameters produced by actual players. This is in large part due to the difficulty in measuring these parameters without adversely affecting the technique we aim to capture.

To enable the investigation of various violin playing techniques, a measurement system has been created that can be used to measure bowing parameters in realtime, while maintaining the portability and playability of a traditional violin and bow. This system consists of a carbon fiber violin bow and electric violin on which a custom electronics are installed. The bow sports a light and compact electronics board featuring a set of gesture sensors, a small battery, and an RF module used to transmit the gesture data. (An early version of this system is shown below.) Together with the audio data provided by the electric violin, the gesture data collected from this custom system is recorded by a laptop computer.

Currently this experimental setup is being used to collect data from advanced student violinists while they perform simple musical tasks and demonstrate various standard bowing techniques, such as détaché, martelé, spiccato. To date, the study has included violinists from the Schulich School of Music of McGill University and the Royal Academy of Music, as well as several novice players. The data from these sessions is currently being analyzed to help understand distinctions between novices and experts, as well as differences between technique among experts.


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