To Save the Sound of a Stradivarius, a Whole City Must Keep Quiet
January 18, 2019 1:24 PM   Subscribe

To Save the Sound of a Stradivarius, a Whole City Must Keep Quiet Make sure to read it to the end. I love it when technology is used to preserve art.
posted by riffola (19 comments total) 41 users marked this as a favorite
 
Good lord, I’ve forgotten how to format posts, my last one was over a decade ago. Sorry!
posted by riffola at 1:25 PM on January 18, 2019 [5 favorites]


It took us a few years to convince the museum to let us use 500-year-old stringed instruments,” he said. Then they had to find top musicians who knew the instruments inside out.

So, no Eddie Van Halen.

Hey, riff.
posted by clavdivs at 1:30 PM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


That was smashing!
posted by Jody Tresidder at 1:39 PM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


Congrats on breaking the drought, riffola!

The article's being a little tricksy by not mentioning that Chiave di Bacco (Key of Bacchus?) is inside the Museo del Violino.
posted by zamboni at 1:41 PM on January 18, 2019 [4 favorites]


Nice find, makes sense now
posted by riffola at 1:42 PM on January 18, 2019


Why wouldn't they record these in an anechoic chamber?
posted by zeoslap at 1:51 PM on January 18, 2019 [7 favorites]


Luckily for the engineers, Cremona’s mayor is also the president of the Stradivarius Foundation, the municipal body that owns the Museo del Violino. He allowed the streets around the museum to be closed for five weeks, and appealed to people in the city to keep it down.

I like the cut of his jib, I gotta say.

Looking at the Google view of the surrounding area that zamboni posted, there are a bunch of violin and bow makers' shops surrounding the museum - I mean, it's Cremona so yeah. But I would tend to imagine that made the STFU edict an easier sell.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:56 PM on January 18, 2019


Why wouldn't they record these in an anechoic chamber?

Well that is a good question. It says that the acoustics of the auditorium were "designed around the sound of the instruments", but does not specify exactly what that involves. Ideal reverberation times, I suppose, for one. They seem to have wanted to capture a usable musical sound.
posted by thelonius at 1:59 PM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


I'm curious what the barista was serving if dropping a glass is too impactful? Because, I mean, when I think espresso machines, I don't think 'yes, those are very quiet'.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:03 PM on January 18, 2019 [6 favorites]


Why wouldn't they record these in an anechoic chamber?

I thought about that as well, and I wonder if the museum was reluctant to let those priceless instruments be removed from the premises.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:16 PM on January 18, 2019


when I think espresso machines, I don't think 'yes, those are very quiet'.

But they aren't likely to transmit much vibration through the ground, either, as the falling glass did.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:18 PM on January 18, 2019


During a recent news conference, the city’s mayor, Gianluca Galimberti, implored Cremona’s citizens to avoid any sudden and unnecessary sounds.
This is straight out of a Guy Maddin movie: "The slightest sound or any false move by anyone can trigger these deadly landslides and sweep all into oblivion! Guard yourself and your neighbor against making that fatal sound!"
posted by Johnny Assay at 2:19 PM on January 18, 2019 [5 favorites]


I expect that someone who knows a lot about recording and audio engineering will be here soon, but , until then, I will say that I don’t think that an anechoic chamber is actually desirable as an environment for recording samples of musical instruments.
posted by thelonius at 2:26 PM on January 18, 2019


Also why not record it at night?
posted by riffola at 2:28 PM on January 18, 2019 [2 favorites]


Why wouldn't they record these in an anechoic chamber?

The magic of Strads happen in a concert hall. They don't actually sound that much different or better 'under the ear' to someone playing them, and I can say that from experience.

This was accidentally proven a while back in an article about a comparison where even experienced musicians couldn't tell the difference between a Strad and a modern or close competitor .... in a hotel room.

But in a nicely reverberating room ... there's the magic.
posted by Dashy at 2:35 PM on January 18, 2019 [11 favorites]


.... and some updates about those comparisons
posted by Dashy at 2:46 PM on January 18, 2019 [5 favorites]


In general, our senses are less accurate and less consistent than we Intuit, and our brains are retroactively filling in gaps until they recognize something. The finer the distinction you are looking for, the more likely the cognitive noise of circumstance and expectation overpower the features you are looking for. It could well be that the difference between a Stradivarius and a more mundane instrument is only evident in a concert hall, but research of vision, taste and hearing tells us that we are very good at forcing experience into assumptions and inventing the details later.

From a purely technical point of view an anechoic recording is much more useful than a concert hall recording. It's easy to add color and filtering, it's much harder to take it away. Acknowledged you likely lose something in terms of technique when the player doesn't get the concert hall feedback she is used to. This could be fixed with a pair of headphones and commodity hardware and software.
posted by idiopath at 2:54 PM on January 18, 2019


I'm wondering if the reverberations affect the instrument as it generates the sound in some kind of feedback loop that works particularly well for Stradivari.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 4:26 PM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


That's a fair point, and I don't know enough about acoustics to speculate on that either way.
posted by idiopath at 4:55 PM on January 18, 2019


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