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)....
A commission from Bay Area cellist, composer, and songwriter, Mia Pixley led to a creative partnership and the development of one of the few new sounds ever to be added to acoustic bowed instruments. Mia was interested in the Off Beat Fiddles. In her performances Mia...
The Tabolin was strung up and played with different configurations of weights on the velum panels. https://youtu.be/cMvSN32r9Pc Thanks to my friends Gabriel Wheaton and Joe Peterson, who helped me sound test the Tabolin Results With no weights The Tabolin is...
In part 1 of this post I discussed the ideas behind the hybrid "Tabolin". The instrument is part violin, part tabla drum and will feature tunable, resonant panels of velum in the body. I hope that the fiddle will have will have playing qualities similar to a Viola...
This is so gratifying! Thanks to every one who has been involved, this is far from a solo effort. You can get a digital version of the Strings story. Also read more about the project on The Redwood Violin Website Earlier Press The project also received local press...
On January 1st this year I effectively quit my violinmaking day job and devoted myself fulltime to the Redwood Violin Project. The idea was to make a violin, from scratch, using only materials from within 25 miles of my house. I asked for help with making the violin...
When I presented the first two unusual fiddles on social media people naturally wanted to know how they sound. Here they are compared to two instruments of the same model, dimensions and wood. Make your own judgement, but to me they sound quite normal, I think that...
In part 1, I described a plan to make a pair of violins with structural features that I think will have effects on the way those instruments sound. I decided to base the designs for the two violins around two of the vibrational modes that have been studied and used as tools by many violinmakers in an attempt to control the tonal qualities of our instruments. This second part describes the designs that I came up with for the two fiddles I intend to build.