Adventurous Muse: Musical Instruments and Whimsical Things

Realist Pickups by David Gage (and Ned Steinberger) added to www.AdventurousMuseStore.com

We have not had an under the bridge pickup for violin, fiddle, viola and octave (baritone) violin available since the Shadow NFX became suddenly unavailable with Meisel Music going out of business several months ago. We did not like the first generation of the Realist pickups very much but love the new ones (a whole lot!).

Available at www.AdventurousMuse.com

We use these pickups on our own electric and electric-acoustic violins.

CodaBow Diamond Series Model Carbon Fiber Violin Bow Feature Comparisons

All models listed are available at the lowest discounted price allowed by CodaBow from the Adventurous Muse (www.AdventurousMuseStore.com)

Diamond NX ($574 list) vs. Diamond SX ($399 list)

Summary: The key advantages of the Diamond SX over the Diamond NX are: The silver fittings, tonal clarity, power, strength. agility and response to fine nuance of technique. It requires somewhat more bowing skill to handle (i.e. a bit less stable in the sense that a race horse is less stable than a work horse). Of course these qualities are sought after by more experienced players.

Link to CodaBow's Comparison Table

Diamond GX ($774 list) vs. Diamond SX ($574 list)

Summary: Key Advantage of the GX over the SX is Tone Color

Link to CodaBow's Comparison Table

Key Advantages of the GX ($774) over the NX ($399 list)

Summary: Tone color, Clarity, Power, agility and response.

Our First Fretted Pochette (pocket fiddle) for an Adventurous Muse Customer

While we at Don Rickert Design and the Adventurous Muse (www.AdventurousMuseStore.com) have experimented with fretted instruments, and will continue to do so, we have a customer for whom we are doing a special version of a Travel Master Pochette (Travel Fiddle / Violin) with tied frets like a Renaissance Fiddle. The use of frets is pretty much what distinguished the Rennaisance Fiddle from the Renaissance Vielle, an updated (from the the Middle Ages) version of the Vielle that was pretty much like a modern fiddle in many ways.

Instead of gut, we will be using monofilament (15 lb fishing line), using one of several methods for tying what is called a "fret knot". Tied on frets allow the player to adjust the intonation (by moving the frets) depending on their bowing style, bridge height and so forth, variables that are far more important on violins than guitars for good intonation.

We'll let you know how it goes. Another advantage of tied frets is that they can be cut off if it doesn't work out.

If it DOES work out, you can be sure that we will be doing a story about it.

Visit our online store (www.AdventurousMuseStore.com)...yes, that was a shameless plug.

One Really Expensive Junk Pile!

Pictured here is a pile of the various bowing surfaces we have designed and built for use on our Violin Synthesizer in development. I am not going to say much about them, as there is at least a little bit of technology in each that we might use for something in the future. NONE of these bowing surfaces have passed my test for acceptability, the most important criterion being that an expert string player be able to use their bowing expression skills unencumbered by the technology. All are based on technologies to accurately sense bowing pressure and speed (i.e. attack) with physical sensors.

Adding up the development hours, this is at least a $50,000 pile of junk. Natural inventors take this in stride, often with the motto, "fail early and fail often."

Anyway, we have given up on vibration and pressure-sensing sensors for the time being for the bowing surface. What could be next? The knowledgeable among you will be able to tell in the series of photos in the next posting that we are using something else altogether to sense which string or strings are being bowed and the "dynamics" of this bowing.

Don Rickert

A lot of people inventing, making and doing cool things with new synthesizers

In our search for answers to the extremely vexing issues associated with designing a bridge for a violin synthesizer (you would think it would be easy, but it ain't), we spread the net wide and discovered a lot of others doing wacky, wonderful and all-around cool things for post-keyboard synthesizers (nothing at all wrong with keyboards).

We intend to add a page of links to these synthesizer god and goddesses really soon. In fact we really need to talk to some of them about selling their instruments through www.AdventurousMuseStore.com.