Comment by tsm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tsm | Hacker News Reader

As a professional violinist who's played both a Strad and a del Gesu (and who spent several months with a 1770 Nicolo Gagliano), and who studies with someone whose daily driver is a del Gesu (and who's been playing antique Cremonese instruments for the past 25 years), I always have problems with this sort of study.

As my teacher put it, "Modern instruments may have a voice that's as good as an antique's, but they only have the one voice. Due to how age works with violins, antique violins have many beautiful voices. In a couple hundred years a 21st century instrument with the same craftsmanship and material quality as Strads and del Gesus—and these instruments do exist—will be as good as a the Strads and del Gesus do now. But right now that's not the case."

And I've found this to be true myself. When I pick up a modern violin it might take some time to figure out how to make it sound best, but then I'm done. With an antique instrument, it turns into this indefinitely-long relationship where I continuously learn new things and find new voices and tone colors in the instrument. When I returned the aforementioned Gagliano after three months of heavy use, I felt like I'd only just begun to discover the range it had available.

And it really is about age for age's sake, not quality. I own a good-but-not-great Edinburgh-made violin from 1807 appraised at $15K, and I've seriously played a modern-made violin appraised for $60K. The "default voice" of the $60K violin is better, but the antique instrument is definitely the more versatile one.

I know we like to be objective and scientific here on HN, but don't discard the fuzzy talk of "forming a relationship with the violin" too soon. Even if we don't understand the science behind it yet, it seems that there's something to it.

A better experiment that'll never happen because of logistics:

Present a professional violinist with ten antique violins, ten modern violins, and a range of high-quality bows (the bow plays a HUGE role in how the violin sounds and responds). Give him/her a few hours to choose the favorite of each type of violin and a complementing bow. Let him/her play both violins for a year and then report back on which was preferred. Repeat for a statistically-significant number of violinists.

> the antique instrument is definitely the more versatile

Not definitely. Only subjectively with an n=1 and botched experimental design. Please repeat blinded, a statistically-significant number of times with different violonists.

"in my opinion" is implied here, especially given the context of the surrounding discussion.

What I think your comment is missing is that the placebo effect is real even if it isn't useful in all cases. Music playing requires a large amount of mental activity across many centers of the brain as well as training and practice to improve muscle memory.

Double-blind trials aren't necessarily the gold standard when there are so many different variables across individuals that can't be controlled and the entire mental process for such a complex idea is not even close to being completely understood.

I suspect there might be something to that. I worked as a professional musician in an orchestra for a while before tinnitus ended my career. I played a professional bassoon by Fox (an american company that makes good bassoons) and switched to the "original" bassoon maker - Heckel. Even though both instruments were new, and even though the "base sound" of the fox was good - if not even better than my heckel - I very much preferred the Heckel. Even though the basic sound was maybe a bit worse on the heckel, the posibilities were greater.

That is an important part of what constitutes a good instrument.

So essentially the only difference between the test that you proposed and what was conducted is that yours is longer and the conducted test was double blind?

Yes, the length is critical.

if you allow me a devil's advocate comment, don't you think the fact that playing a modern violin and figuring out how to making it sound the best and being 'done' could be because the modern violin is constructed better?

If a modern violin has tighter tolerances maybe it is less sensitive to moisture / temperature changes, making it sound 'the same' under a larger set of conditions than the antique instrument.

The antique instrument being less 'perfect' could be more sensitive to day-to-day environmental changes, making it more challenging to play (as you have to learn to compensate for these) but not necessarily because it is a better instrument, but possibly because it is a worse one technically speaking.

Now of course having an instrument that you have to 'figure out' all the time likely makes you a much better player, able to adapt to other instruments more easily and so on, so it might well be that a 'less perfect' instrument is the superior one, but just wondering about this

What were the circumstances around your playing of a Strad? Are there special protocols for handling it, traveling with it? That sounds pretty interesting.

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