The intricacies of violin making

I attended a little afternoon talk on violin making, organised by the SSO Learning Circle (of which have recently been revived) and presented by luthier (i.e. violin maker) Mr. Andreas Franke.

Before I go on, a short note about SSO Learning Circle. It's a group of people who are friends of SSO and gather once in a while to share about classical music. It had been "dormant" for the last 2 years, but has started to become active again it seems. As for Mr. Franke, he is one of the luthiers of Frank Brothers Violins (the violin shop at Esplanade), a craftsman of the 4th generation luthier family.

Ok. back to the session. This the first time I know of certain aspects of the violin and also the engineering science & precision that goes into building one. There was talk of some history of violins, like why nowadays, one can't make a violin as good as the old ones. Some interesting points...

A violin, being made of organic material will get seasoned over time and as it gets played by different people, it ages differently. The tonality of the organic violin will change - each such violin will sound different. However, those that are not made of wood will always sound the same and also, mass produced.

In the Baroque age, violins actually had straight necks as compared to now and a different bow (much like the shape of a bow in the context of bow & arrow). It was harder to play and secure on the neck. Now, violin necks are made angled. This actually causes more tension in the strings and it also enables the sound of the violin to be better projected/amplified.

Interesting, in the olden days, the strings were made from sheep gut!

Also, the violin is usually made up of different types of wood. The backing & ribs are usually made of maple while the top is made of spruce, due to the different hardness of the wood to be able to create a sounding board in the violin. I never knew that there was such a complex internal transmission system! As one plays on the violin, the vibration gets transmitted through the bridge to some sort of connector in the violin (forgot the name for that part) and travels inside violin laterally, vibrating throught the internal body of the violin. Even the weight of the bow counts in the way one would play and how the music would sound.

The best part was the end, where a demo was done on a few Italian violins that Andreas brought. They were of different market values, ranging from Euro 115K to Euro 170K (old violins) and one at SGD 48K for a new Italian violin. I could tell why the most expensive one there that day was priced as such. The moment I heard it, it pulled at my heart strings, unlike the rest (not that they were not good). It was beautiful, like your heart was singing with the violin.

Ah...the violin. The perfect instrument. Must go & season my violin soon, though mine can't compare to those seen today.

Why the toast always lands butter side down

OK! Now for what I actually set out wanting to blog about rather than the previous post. A mini book review!

Yes, finally finished the book "Why the Toast Always Lands Butter Side Down: The Science of Murphy's Law" by Richard Robinson.

It's all about Murphy's Law and it was really fun reading it. Some of them really applied to our everyday lives & little examples here & there really made me laugh. A great book to cheer me up and philosophical! Also humour in science. Now I know why we yawn when someone else yawns. It's because of mirror neurons!

The main law - "WHATEVER CAN GO WRONG, WILL GO WRONG".

Think many of us have experienced this so yup, if you're interested, read of how contradictory life is.

As promised, I shall share with you some of the laws mentioned.

"A heavy, ugly, useless thing has sat in the dark corner of a cabinet for 20 years. The day after you throw it away, you need it urgently."

"The best way to be late is to give yourself plenty of time."

"When your hands are tied, your nose itches"

"Bad luck comes in threes"

"Her pile is mess; your pile is work in progress"

"When you search for something, you go back to the same place again and again..."(...and on the 20th time, it's there)

"A confidential whisper is heard better than a loud shout"

"Every Beatles needs its Ringo"

"The death of one person is a tragedy; the death of 5,000 people is a statistic"

"When people can do as they please they all do the same"

"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree on"

"Each solution opens the door to a more difficult problem"

"Never let a computer know how much hurry you are in"

"A committee is a group of people who can't decide anything on their own, but together can decide that nothing can be done"

"Committee: a place where good ideas go to die"

"If a problem causes many meetings, the meetings eventually become more important than the problem"

"The secret of success is sincerity - once you can fake that, you've got it made"

"In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence"

"When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder"

"The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of"

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind"

"Objects behave better when you shout at them"

"When a body is immersed in water, the doorbell rings"

"Any tool, when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner of the room"

"Floorboards squeak loudest when you need to be quietest"

"Shortcuts are the longest routes"

"Traffic lights are always red when you're in a hurry"

"Your queue always goes slowest"

"Buses come in threes"

"The bigger the bargain, the more money leaves your pocket"

"Whatever you buy, the day after the guarantee runs out, it snaps"

"Everything looks useful until you buy it"

"The noodle effect: when at last you have to ask the supermart assistant where the noodles are, they're right beside your head"

Murphy's Law

Yeah! Finally managed to borrow the book "Why the Toast Always Lands Butter Side Down: The Science of Murphy's Law" by Richard Robinson. Borrowed it from TPCL today. The CLL one was forever on loan and eventually, it seemed to have gone missing from the collection.

Murphy's Law includes things like 'why the queue you join always goes slowest'. The book tells you the science (& psychology) behind it and it's quite fun to read; the real scientific reasons why everything always goes wrong. The law basically states that "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong". The by-laws include:

"Whatever can't go wrong, will go wrong"
"Trying to make things better only makes things worse"
"Any attempt to do nothing, so nothing can go wrong, will go wrong"

Some funny/interesting quotes from the initial reading:

"...Murphy's Law will ensure that I think of several very important things I forgot to mention the day after the book is published."

"If the brain were simple enough for us to understand it, we'd be so simple we wouldn't be able to."

Anyway, also realised that I haven't done much leisure reading lately...usually will do my own review of the book once I finished one (with exceptions). Will try to list down the various "questions" we always experience under Murphy's Law & see how true they are once I'm done.