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Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence

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Re: Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence

#41

Post by giraffe_lady »

hackingonempty wrote: post #39
tsm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a semi-professional violinist who got to borrow a Strad for a couple months and whose long-term teacher has the lifetime loan of a del Gesu (and has had access to a Strad but prefers the del Gesu!) I don't have Studies to back this up, but anecdotally: * Playing fine violins takes a lot of practice with the specific instrument to begin to unlock its potential. I was scratching the surface after a couple months; p…

Humans are all subject to cognitive biases. Musicians are no different. That is why controlled testing is the only way to determine if these extraordinary instruments actually produce extradordinary sound. Wouldn't you like to know if you could sound just as good on an ordinary instrument? I imagine a lot of money could be saved and and a lot of stress could be avoided.

If I had access to a del Gesù why would I care how I sound on an ordinary instrument? Have you ever handled a tool of your craft that was used by many masters before you? The cognitive biases of musicians are part of the music they make. It is the role of other people to examine the instruments, and no one is stopping them. Musicians must keep their biases.

Anyway everyone who uses one of these still has their "normal" (masterfully crafted modern) instruments for when it's the more practical choice.

Re: Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence

#43

Post by bondarchuk »

dyauspitr wrote: post #40
bondarchuk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether there are any real, noticeable physical differences between the sound produced by a Strad and that produced by expert modern luthiers. Isn't this trivially true? I'm sure if you hook up both cellos to a bowing robot using many permutations of contact point, fingering, speed, pressure and angle, and record the sound, it would be possible to consistently discern them through spectral analysis or something. Is…

I guess another way of putting it would be that the aura of an instrument that elicits a more sentimental playing of it by the musician is sort of not really interesting or relevant because you can just lie about any instrument to elicit it.

No, I am not talking about aura at all, I'm just saying that the physical, measurable sound that an instrument produces in response to being played, physically and measurably, could have more subtle effects on artistic performance (as a consequence of the physical vibrations of the object and the way those vibrations respond to the player and vice versa) than those that could be elided in an afternoon of A/B-testing under the banner of "stradivarius myth DEBUNKED".

Re: Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence

#44

Post by hackingonempty »

bondarchuk wrote: post #25
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what you're getting at, and I can appreciate it, but it's also kind of bullshit. You say "instruments have a sort of soul and that can inspire musicians which leads to better sound" - well, if that's the case, then people should be able to hear the difference in that sound in blind tests, which so far they basically haven't.

But a cello is not a machine on which you press one button and then one sound comes out. You can't just press the button on both machines and then check which makes the better sound. Playing a cello is a feedback loop between the instrument, musculature, nerves/brains, emotions, culture.... It's not unthinkable to me that something like that would take a couple decades of work by highly skilled people to lead to an e…

In controlled tests the instruments are played by highly skilled musicians (usually the ones that possess them) but they don't know which instrument they are playing. Musicians cannot perfectly reproduce their performance so statistical methods are used to separate the effect from the noise, just like every other scientific experiment.

Re: Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence

#45

Post by baerrie »

dyauspitr wrote: post #18
baerrie wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, there are many intangible qualities of the way an instrument resonates and feels while playing that often contributes more to the better playing than the raw sound itself. It’s strange to say but instruments have a sort of soul and that can inspire musicians which leads to better sound

You’re going to run into a bunch of trouble using “soul” for anything. It serves a purpose but that’s usually either laziness, inability to measure some physical quality or a placebo effect. Generally pointing that out will end up putting someone in the pedant bucket but I’m risking it.

It is none of those things despite being not easy to measure. There are many phenomena not empirically proven that science still mentions and theorizes about. The quantum theory of cognition points to something like a soul mattering more than it used to for example. There are countless scientific discussions involving unknown unknowns of our universe yet as soon as we go the opposite direction, into the unknown unknowns of our own experience, that is somehow unscientific?

Re: Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence

#46

Post by baerrie »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9
baerrie wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, there are many intangible qualities of the way an instrument resonates and feels while playing that often contributes more to the better playing than the raw sound itself. It’s strange to say but instruments have a sort of soul and that can inspire musicians which leads to better sound

I understand what you're getting at, and I can appreciate it, but it's also kind of bullshit. You say "instruments have a sort of soul and that can inspire musicians which leads to better sound" - well, if that's the case, then people should be able to hear the difference in that sound in blind tests, which so far they basically haven't.

A relationship with an instrument takes time. There are more factors than the mechanical use of an instrument, our hands and bodies feel things on subconscious levels, leading to emergent qualities that don’t fit neatly into “sounds better or worse”. For musicians and artists this is a no brainer, for those that haven’t experienced this I understand why you are incredulous but it doesn’t mean it is a throwaway factor.
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