Stringed Music Instrument: Violin

The parts of the violin

The violin is a carefully made hollow wooden box, with a neck protruding from the top, and a internal sound post connecting the front (belly) and the back. The sides of the violin, curiously, are called ribs. The belly is reinforced by an internal bass bar, which runs vertically through the instrument underneath the lowest string. The raised outline on the outside of the violin surface is called a perflin.

The four strings run from a tailpiece attached to the base of the violin, across an intricately carved wooden bridge, then upward just above the fingerboard. At the top end of the fingerboard, the strings cross the nut, a very small second bridge, mounted just slightly above the fingerboard. They then enter the pegbox, where they are wound around their tuning pegs, which are mounted sideways through tightly fitting holes in the pegbox. The tip of the pegbox is ornamented with a carved wooden scroll.

The bridge of a violin has two purposes. First, it holds the strings in an arched configuration, permitting each to be touched separately by the bow. The bridge also transmits the sound vibrations of the strings to the belly, from which they are transmitted to the back by the sound post.

Materials of the violin

Generally the belly, the sound post, and the bass bar are made of spruce a light but strong softwood. The back, ribs, neck, pegbox, scroll, and bridge are of maple, a hardwood. The choice of woods is basically the same as in the piano where a hardwood bridge is attached to a spruce soundboard, mounted on a hardwood frame.

The fingerboard of a violin is of ebony.Some old violins have ivory fingerboards.

Strings were originally made of gut. Such strings are still often used in histroically accurate perfom dance of music from the 18th century and earlier. However, they have a tendency to go out of tune and snap more easily than modern strings, which are made from metal. Modern A, D and G strings are usually metal-cored and wound with metal for greater mass in order to vibrate at a lower pitch, with the E (top) string being a metal mono-filament of steel. Synthetic cored strings (wound with metal) are also employed today; they combine some of the benefits of gut strings with greater longevity and tuning stability.

The hair of the bow is traditionally horse hair, although many cheaper bows use synthetic material. The hair must be frequently rubbed with rosin in order to grip the strings and cause them to vibrate.

Physics of Violin Acoustics

It has been known for a long time that the thickness of the wood and its physical qualities govern the sound of a stringed instrument such as the violin. The sound and tone of the violin is determined by how the belly and back plates of the violin behave acoustically, according to modes or schemes of movement determined by German physicist ernst chladni Patterns of the nodes (places of no movement) made by sand sprinkled on the plates with the plate vibrated at certain frequencies are called "Chladni patterns", and are often used by luthiers to verify their work before assembling the instrument. A scienstic includes a discussion of how the properties of the wood determines where the nodes occur, whether the plates move with end or diagonally opposite points rising together or in various mixed modes.



Source:Hindustanis.org