John Silakowski (1949-2022) was a violinmaker in Scottsburg, Indiana. He was the first violinmaker to make purpose built five-strings for fiddlers. He was quite productive and despite their slightly folksy appearance, his instruments are very much sought after by...
this fiddle is the second in a series exploring the sources of variety that we see in violins. A broader discussion of the ideas behind this series is laid out in an earlier post. where I suggest that there are four sources of variety in any violin, or man made...
Un-Natural. Playing the violin in the conventional manner requires some rather un-natural contortions. The left elbow is held more or less directly below the violin neck. This requires some contortion when the instrument is played in the third and higher positions,...
I wanted a guitar that played like an electric, but one that I didn't have to plug into an amplifier to hear. What I enjoy about the electric guitar are the bendable notes, the sustain, the greater sensitivity to vibrato and tremolo and the physical ease of playing....
I made this fiddle as the first of a series to explore the sources of variety that we see in violins. I'm also thinking about traditional violinmaking in the Digital Age. A broader discussion of the ideas behind this series is laid out in an earlier post. Variations...
This post is about variety in violins, why it is important, where it come from, and how it has been influenced by mechanization. I will also look at the effects and possibilities of digitization on modern violinmaking. Every violin that you come across is slightly...
This was a spin off from the Freestyle Violin project. These tests took place at the Oberlin Violinmakers Workshop in 2023. Many of the violinmakers at the workshop had brought instruments with them to show their colleagues. Thinking about violin design, one of the...
In a previous post about the Freestyle Violin Project I documented how two violins, a "dark" sounding one and a "bright" sounding one , were made without the use of measuring tools. The actual dimensions of the materials used and the parts created were recorded and...
Some years ago, in reaction to the modern violinmaking trend in towards "hyper-copying", I made a violin without a predefined outline. I built the body of the Cadenza Violin without the use of templates and without using any graduated measuring tools (no numbers)....
Strad Magazine (March 2023) published an article on my Off-Beat Violins There's some online companion material , and the full online feature for subscribers