Bridge admittance measurements of 10 preference-rated violins

Charalampos Saitis , Claudia Fritz , Bruno Giordano (1) , Gary Scavone

1 CIRMMT - Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche en Musique, Médias et Technologie [Montréal]

The overall goal of the research presented here is to investigate correlations between measured vibrational properties of the violin and subjective judgments by violinists and to better understand what distinguishes one instrument from another. The novelty of this study is that 10 violins of different make and age were evaluated and preference-rated by 13 experienced musicians in a carefully controlled violin-playing perceptual experiment. Regarding the vibrational properties of the instruments, the classical bridge admittance measurements have been examined so far. The five “signature” modes below 600 Hz were identified in all of the tested violins. Preliminary results generally show no prominent preference-related trend for mode frequencies or damping. Results of more in-depth comparisons between violins that had significantly different across-players average preference scores will be presented at the conference.

Mots clés: Violin; Acoustics; Perception

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Charalampos Saitis, Claudia Fritz, Bruno Giordano, Gary Scavone. Bridge admittance measurements of 10 preference-rated violins. Acoustics 2012, Apr 2012, Nantes, France. ⟨hal-00810717⟩