Blaming the tools....

The last couple of weeks, I've had my had my Violinist hat firmly on as there were some little concerts starting up. However, next week, I will have to put my Viola player's hat on as I have a weeklong project of playing Viola.

In the last concert, I was playing a Violin concerto as a soloist... but I had lent my Viola (pictured above) to the Viola player in the ensemble as it was a much better instrument than the one that she had access to. Generally, I don't mind too much about lending an instrument to someone who is playing in the same ensemble as me as long as they aren't taking it home... so, just for the rehearsals and the concerts... but I don't lose sight of the instrument! What really annoys me is when people ask to take the instrument for a project than I'm not playing for... which means that the project organisers have asked a person to play who doesn't have the appropriate instruments, when they could have just asked someone who actually plays the instrument! I guess that is also the player's fault as well... they should just say that they don't play the instrument and refuse the work (and possibly recommending someone...), rather than pretending that they do and then trying to find one... anyway, that is what I would do... but not everyone does! /rant

So, I had someone else playing my lovely Baroque Viola over the weekend whilst I was screaming around on the Baroque Violin. Thankfully, they really enjoyed playing my Viola...

Now, it is always something that I'm sure is mostly in my head... but when I let another person play my instrument for an extended period of time... it always feels like it is completely different when it comes back to me! So, I was struggling with the Viola for a couple of days since playing it exclusively...

... my scientific mind tells me that I'm going nuts about it... but the creative side screams that the instrument is different! Of course, there is a change that little things might be different and it would be tempting to blame the tools for the lack of fluidity in the playing and the somewhat awkward meshing of player and instrument. Things like a shifted bridge or something like that... although, to affect those things, you would have to really mistreat the instrument!

A possible cause of the difficulty might have been due to the changing weather, from hot to cold whilst remaining quite humid. Large shifts in temperature and humidity means that the strings (gut) and the body of the instrument (wood) expand and shift in different ways... leading to different stresses and equilibrium in the tension of the instrument... which does obviously affect the sound through the soundboard of the instrument and the transfer of vibrations from the strings to the body of the instrument.

There is also a more severe option, where the body of the instrument start to shift so much that the seams of the instrument open up. This is a design feature of these old acoustic instruments... the seams are lightly glued with animal based glue such that the joins are the first part to give way and open up... rather than the soundboard developing a much more disastrous crack! Of course, an opening in the soundbox (body) of the instrument means that there is power loss in various frequencies of the sound... which results in a different sound and interaction with the instrument than what is "normal".

My rational side tells me that the most likely culprit for the awkward meshing is likely to be the player. So, having played mostly Violin in the intervening couple of weeks... the touch and interplay between the bow and the strings would be slightly off... leading to difficulties that are small (my wife tells me she doesn't hear anything different...) but perceptible to the player. Also there would be different dynamic between the left hand of the player and the strings of the instrument as well... the positions of the notes are just slightly different and feel different... and that would lead to the instrument not quite resonating in the right way if the notes are just that little bit off..

So, after tapping around the seams of the instrument to make sure that the Viola wasn't open... I rapidly discarded the notion that the instrument was having a little hissy fit about being made to work with a different player... and assumed that the problem was in my skills. After a couple of days... yep, it is sounding much better... and we are working together efficiently as a team again!

I'll never truly know if the problem definitely was me... or if the Viola has forgiven me... it feels nice to think that the instrument has forgiven me (or been tamed back into discipline!)... but deep down, I think I would blame myself first!

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