3D Fiddle?
DaWaterRat
Posts: 2,885
I know that they're very similar to violins, and I have a couple of violin models which will do if I must, but has anyone made a 3D fiddle? I know the difference in the sound (I prefer fiddles), and a quick bit of research reveals that it isn't just a different style of play, but the instruments are actually slightly different.
An older style Byzantine Lira would be cool too. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_lira )
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I don't know about fiddles, but with all the cool fantasy stuff you may be able to find something that resembles the Lira. I really love the instrument that comes with this outfit Elven Nymph. It's listed as a Cello. And there's a really nice Lute in the Fantasy Instruments set which I liked because it looked different than the lutes I've gotten with others.
I know these aren't exactly what you're looking for, but I thought I'd mention them in case you want to check them out. Sometimes you can find some nice extras with things like clothes or environments :)
Thanks. I have fantasy instruments, but I missed the four string one in there (which I can make work). Don't have the Elven Nymph outfit. Will have to hope I can decide before the sale ends.
Malik had a fiddle,iirc can't remember string count
The biggest difference between a violin and a fiddle is the bridge. It's flatter on a fiddle; rounder on a violin. The visual difference is so minor, all but your most zoomed-in renderings probably won't show it.
The difference in the bridge curvature allows for faster double-stopping and even triple-stopping (playing three strings with and up-bow or down-bow stroke). But good players can still play fiddle music with a "violin." This from my two luthiers, a former teacher who'd been playing for decades, and a couple searches I did just minutes ago to make sure I wasn't relaying bad info.
Everything else is the same. Some will say, "oh, the strings are different." Or "the pickup is different". Naaah, not really.
When I had my acoustic violin set up the first time, I drove 2 hours to my first luthier (before I learned of one in my town). After a visual inspection, he played my instrument, knocked his knuckles on the back of it and listened to the sound, then said he would change the tailpiece for a bit more power and volume, (the tailpiece is the metal contraption with fine-tuners that attaches the strings to the butt-end of the instrument), adjust the sound post, put on a fresh set of decent but not-too-expensive D'darrio strings, and if I wanted better fiddle action, he would sand my bridge flatter rather than charge me for a new bridge.
I asked him why I might want fiddle action and he asked me what kind of music I wanted to play. I said orchestra, rock, blues, pop, jazz, and new age, and he said he'd adjust the bridge position for intonation, but otherwise would leave it alone.
So I have a violin. :lol:
I've got the box with a bridge of an unfinished Celtic Lyre I did in Hex a year or two ago here someplace. You want it?
:lol:
I checked out the Wikipedia link above and then went to the section 'variations' or something like that and it led to a Hardanger Violin which is a Norwegian variation. It's beautiful according to the pic there. Painted bridge and carved scroll. Has 4 extra strings underneath the four main ones which reverberate sympathetically when the main strings are bowed. Wow. I'd love to hear what it sounds like--haunting I imagine.
I played viola years ago (studied violin earlier but the high E string bothered me) tho my fave instrument is the cello. My fingers are long enough to handle it, but the tips aren't big enough to manage double-stops on the cello. My viola had an electric bridge (I bought it from my teacher who played in the pit for various broadway shows) and when she was playing in Purly she swapped her Stradivarius for my electric bridge for a few weeks. Wow. I was in heaven for that period.
Oh, just remembered. Nursoda's Malik comes with his own fiddle/violin and a pose or two...here's a little pic I did a few years ago.
I have both a 4-string acoustic violin (described above) and a 7-string electric violin, which has the range of cello, viola, and violin. Much harder to play, especially the low Bb string because it has to be somewhat loose to reach Bb (which is a whole step below the Cello's lowest note, the open C string) in an instrument with the scale length of a violin. A longer scale-length would allow that string to be a bit tighter and still be able to reach that pitch. Some players tune that string up a half-step to B because a bow sometimes has trouble grabbing it, even with cello rosin. My acoustic has a piezo pickup slipped into the wing-slot on the bridge, so that I can plug in. I should really replace the strings on both instruments and play again. Love the sound.
I had heard a story about that E string (because the tension on it is so frigging high) breaking and causing a freak-accident eye injury during installation/tuning, so I wear safety glasses when I change my strings. :coolcheese:
I had heard of people painting their violins, but I have also heard that many refuse to re-finish dings and scratches, because you want the back plate and front plate to vibrate freely. My teacher once showed me how you can use a dot of brown, black, or dark red sharpie felt marker to cover up the wood if a particularly distracting blemish occurs.
Other trivia:
Did you know that some violin strings are still made with real gut? Eeewww, yuck. Never in a million years could I...
A violin "mute" is a rubber contraption that clamps over the bridge without touching the strings. It really shuts down the vibration of the bridge, which prevents the whole thing from vibrating.
Traditional bow hair is really made from horse hair. No, not horsefeathers, horse hair. My local luthier has bunches of it hanging from the wall in his workshop. The last time I had my bow re-haired, he gave me a choice: Black hair or white hair. Everybody has white, so I put black on mine. There are artificial bowhairs available; some are supposed to be very good. When playing, sometimes some of the hair strands will break, and you'll have a long hair or two hanging down from the tip of the bow or from the frog. You can't repair this, so you just pull them off.
Rosin is tree sap that has been cooked. It looks like prehistoric amber when in cake form, but looks white on the business-side of black bowhair. Rosin comes in different formulations for different playing styles or for cello for "extra grab". A cake will develop cracks in it over time. This doesn't hurt anything, but you can leave a cake in a hot car or bake it in an oven (if you're careful) and the rosin will sometimes reform; sort of like what happens when you melt wax.
Horse hair has tiny microscopic barbules going in both directions. When the player draws the bow up or down, these barbules catch the strings, pulling them a bit until the string's tension causes the string to retreat from the barbs. While drawing the bow up or down, a string will vibrate at the frequency chosen by the player (open or stopped by a finger), and the vibrations will be transmitted through the bridge to the top plate and sound-post, then to the bottom plate (back of the violin). All this vibration makes the violin's sound.
Bows used to be made out of Pernambuco wood, but the Pernambuco tree is endangered, so most bows today are made from plastic, carbon, or some other type of wood. It costs me over $50 to have my bow re-haired. My current bow is carbon-fiber and cost $400 new, twice the cost of my student violin. Bows often cost more than the instrument does. The little wooden piece that holds the bow hair by your hand is called a "frog", although it looks nothing like an amphibian. It's made of a hard wood such as ebony, or possibly plastic or carbon fiber and might have some inlaid design in it in some sort of shell or semiprecious stone. Common in $400 and higher bows. The frog has to be fairly rigid and strong because the bowhair tension is controlled by a screw in the end of the frog, and attached to a mechanism into which this end of the bowhair is clamped.
About the only part of a violin doesn't contribute directly to the instrument's sound is the scroll where the tuning pegs are.
In traditional instruments, tuning pegs are matched to the holes in the scroll so that they hold the strings by friction alone. Fine tuners at the tailpiece reduce tuning frustration. Some instruments, like my electric violin, have guitar "machine tuners" (gears) for convenience, and because they look badass. :coolsmirk:
To tune, a skilled violin player only needs to hear one note: "A" (orchestra "A" sometimes called "A-440"), and will tune the A string to that pitch. From there, he/she will play the A and E strings together and tune the E by listening for the perfect 5th. Then tune the D to the A by 5th. And tune the G to the D by 5th. They do this all while the rest of the orchestra is doing the SAME THING at the SAME TIME!
I think violins are hard to draw and must be difficult to model without accurate photos for templates. My eye complains when I see a drawn or rendered violin that is the wrong shape, unless it is a solid-body electric instrument. In traditional acoustic violins and violas, the shape is critical to the sound, especially the size (and volume) of the "box" as some of you call it, and the shape and position of the fingerboard at the "bout" where the player's fingering hand goes when playing the notes higher up on the fingerboard.
The fingerboard is often made of ebony wood. This is a dense wood, very hard, so it can withstand the pressing of the strings in the lower positions without the wood becoming compressed and eventually developing grooves, which would make intonation and tuning more challenging. Traditional violins do not have frets. Instead, the musician must make the correct sound by proper stopping of the string.
There's actually a lot more I know, but if you're not dead from boredom by now, you would be if I went on much longer... :red:
The violin is an amazing instrument, and as some of you know, there are many variations of it around the world. One of my favorites is the "Erhu", which is a 2-string version of a violin. Looks very different, and is played very differently, too.
Okay, I'll be quiet now...
Not boring at all. And I'm familiar with most of what you've written there. I will say, though, that the strings can break not just while tuning but while playing as well. It's happened to me a couple of times.
True story. I walked into a neighborhood bar to meet some friends. A familiar hangout and the bartender on duty knew me and knew I played the viola (I actually was carrying it with me in it's old battered case). As I passed the bar on my way back to the table where my friends were, the bartender said 'Hi' and 'How's business'. I laughed and told him 'I broke my G-string today' (which was true). All the heads at the bar swiveled around and stared at me. :)
What is called a "fiddle" varies from area to area. In the US and UK, the common "fiddle" is nothing but an inexpensive student grade violin. ("fiddle" and "violin" are actually two different ways of corrupting the same old word, "vitula", much the way that "shirt" and "skirt" are both corruptions of "kirtel".
At one point, millions of middle class Americans and English forcibly enrolled their kids in violin lessons. Eventually, these kids graduated school, set off on their own, and never mutilated Hayden or strong-armed Bach from their violins again. This led to insane quantities of inexpensive violins filling the pawn shops and bric-a-brac stores.
At the same time, waves of immigration were happening. Half the cultures around the world had some sort of small bowed string instrument, the rebec, kontra, crowd, etc. When those immigrants discovered these inexpensive violins, they picked up their various traditions in their new countries. So you have Irish fiddle, Gypsy fiddle, Cajun fiddle, Appalachian fiddle, Jazz fiddle, you name it.
Discarding the chin-rest was the most popular fiddler's modification to the violin. Any sanely made 3D model of a violin should allow for easy deletion of the chinrest. For authenticity, add two black dots, as if the screw-holes for the chin-rest had been filled in with pitch.
The changes in the bridges that Subtropical Pixel mentioned didn't come until much later, when certain masters of the fiddle became popular enough to afford to have luthiers adapt "stock" violins to their particular styles. Other changes to the sounding board and f-holes generally led to a louder sound. The changes to bridge and f-holes could be made inexpensively by a relatively unskilled luthier. A really successful fiddler can afford to have a purpose built "fiddle" for their particular style of music.
Oh, that would be excellent. I was looking into older proto-violins for her to use some older instruments as well.
Obviously, there are some people here who know their fiddles from their violins. I'm not one of them. If somebody would be kind enough to look through the selection listed in my Musical Instrument Freebies list and tell me which are which, I'd be happy to group them in the next revision of the list.
You keep a fantastic list there, rob. Under Chamber Quartet Instruments there are two violins. The first is a violin definitely but I can't tell much from the thumb for the second.
I based it on images from http://www.michaeljking.com/how_to_play_the_lyre.htm
When I said it was unfinished, I really meant it. It looks like this:
If you want it, I can send it to you, but it needs a bit of polish and such.
If nothing else, it gives me somewhere to start from. :) Thank you.
Violin (fiddle?) with no chin rest: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/?item_id=74017