h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dear Gag--

Here's that information I promised you.

Parts of the violin:

The hourglass-shaped body, sometimes called the box, is made up of several pieces of wood. The top and bottom of the box are carved out from pieces of wood and are fairly thick; the sides are thin pieces of wood which are steamed and bent to a form, then allowed to dry until the form keeps. All this pieces are glued together and, at certain points, reinforced with small blocks of wood.

Affixed to the body is the neck of the instrument, which leads to the peg box - not surprising, where the tuning pegs are and where the strings are wound - and the scroll, so named for its, er, scroll-like shape. The fingerboard, usually made of ebony, is glued to the neck. If you follow the strings down from the scroll along the fingerboard, you will eventually encounter the bridge, a small piece of curved wood that holds the strings above the fingerboard. After crossing the bridge, the strings attach to the tailpiece. The chin rest (a fairly modern addition to violin design) is attached to the left of the tailpiece by a bracket. Once the instrument is strung, the tension of the strings becomes part of the structure of the instrument: unlike many other stringed instruments, on the violin (and violin family instruments), the tailpiece is held aloft – and indeed, the bridge is kept in place – solely by the force the strings exert. Crucial to the violin’s sound, however, is a part of the violin that few casual observers ever see: the sound post, a small dowel fitted inside the body and kept in place by the pressure of the bridge on the top and by a good tight fit to begin with. The sound post catches the vibrations off the bridge and conducts them to the top and bottom of the instrument, spreading the sound throughout the body of the instrument and giving the violin its sonorous quality. Placement of the sound post is very important: a few millimeters off, and the violin’s sound is dampened.

The Strings

The modern violin family of instruments all have four strings. On a violin, the strings are tuned in fifths. The bottom string is a G, followed by D, A, and E. On modern instruments, the G, D, and A strings are wound with steel, though the cores of the strings vary from titanium to steel to nylon (the preference of many classical players) to, yes, sheep gut, though gut strings are almost prohibitively expensive. It is rumored that cat gut strings, the strings of yore, are still available, though difficult to find.

The strings are tuned by twisting the pegs in the peg box about until you reach the desired pitch. Unlike guitars, where the pegs are kept in place by screws, the pegs on a violin are held in place only by the tight fit of the pegs in the peg box; in weather where temperature and humidity change drastically and the wood expands and contracts, tuning can be a real pain as the pegs are likely to slip. The highest string, the E, also has a fine tuner on the tailpiece – a practical conceit, since the E string is really just a length of wire strung to high tension, and overtuning it will very likely break it, causing it to whip into the player’s hands or eyes, into the hands or eyes of other players, or most grotesquely, into the player’s sternum, where it lodges until removed by a doctor (true story!)

The Bow

The bow is divided into several parts. Intuitively, the main part of the bow is called the stick, and the tip of the bow is, indeed, the tip. The part of the bow held by the hand, however, is called the frog. The bow hair is still horse hair after all these years. Attempts have been made to synthesize horse hair’s coarse texture, but the result was too expensive to be practical. To preserve the hair for as long as possible, it is loosened in repose and tightened only to play. The hair’s grip on the strings is increased by rubbing rosin (dried tree sap) along its length.

P.S. Sorry about all that garbage that's in my post--I pasted it in from Microsoft Word and the dashes and apostrophes didn't quite make it.

Dr. F.

Well and good for your traditional violin (which is what most people play). You can also get amplified and all electric violins in much the same way as guitars (yes I've been in concerts - not classical mind you - where these have been played).

God bless you, you're right, Phil(). I just figured that since the article itself focuses on the violin as a classical instrument, I would stick to the task at hand. Maybe another entry?

But with a title like The Violn, it seems like you will be talking about the violin as a whole, not just one specific use of a small four stringed bowed instrument.
Perhaps, calling it the Classical Violin

But with a title like The Violn, it seems like you will be talking about the violin as a whole, not just one specific use of a small four stringed bowed instrument.
Perhaps, calling it the Classical Violin

Still it's a good article which looks like it should be included in the guide. Maybe your post about how the beasts are built could be made into an article (shouldn't need too much reformatting).

Oops.

You gots yerself a point there, Phil (55494). I had originally thought that when people say "violin," they mean classical or jazz--and in those two cases, what I said holds. But you're right: when violinists plug it, they're still violinists. With that in mind...

Amplifying/Electrifying the Violin:

Amplifying any acoustic instrument is a tricky business, but the violin is harder still: because the sound is so even and constant, violins are much more likely to feed back--horridly--than any other acoustic instrument, including the lower range violas and 'cellos.

The simplest way to mike a violin is simply to stick a microphone in front, or above it, pointing down in the direction of the bridge. This limits the player's movement--and the chances of feedback are greatest--but many violinists prefer it because it most easily captures the natural sound of the instrument.

Those who want a more electrified instrument also have several options available. Some violinists mount a small microphone on the side of their instrument that snakes across the top and snuggles up next to the bridge, where it picks up the sound as it leaves the instrument. Others prefer a similarly mounted device that ends in a pickup directly attached to the bridge itself. This dampens the sound somewhat, but it cuts down further on feedback and allows the violinist to engage with the effects that make electric guitars so popular.

Violinists who wish to go completely electric end up ditching the hollow-body acoustic instrument altogether, and opt instead for a solid-body electric version. Curiously, even these solid-body violins aren't "electric" in the sense that electric guitars are, as they still use the abovementioned pickup that attaches to the bridge rather than the magnetic pickups of electric guitars, which get their signal from the strings themselves. The result is almost a different instrument altogether, a warmer, more responsive creature that many violinists who go electric have to take some time adjusting to. Also, it's not uncommon for electric violins to have five strings instead of four--a C string added to the bottom, making the instrument, in classical terms, a combination of a violin and a viola.

Good enough, Phil (55494)?

That sounds excellent Dr. Funk. If you do write it into an article, then I'll certainly recommend it as you've now increased my knowledge of an instument that I can't play (well that's all of them anyway )