Bluetooth Bow is
a Wireless Mouse for Music
As the guitarist with the electronic-music group TrioMetrik, Keith McMillen watched his band mates—
a violinist and a double bassist—struggle with conventional controllers. A musical-instrument inventor and software engineer by profession, he wondered if his band mates could use bow pressure, for instance, instead of a foot pedal to control that wah-wah effect. Not only would the string players feel less awkward, but they could also employ their bowing prowess to control any digital event.
“The bow is the most evolved controller in the world,” says McMillen, who invented the Zeta electric violin almost 30 years ago. But communicating that subtle expressive power to a computer has proved elusive—until now.
His new K-Bow System, four years in development, features a bow with sensors, accelerometer, antenna, an emitter placed under the instrument fingerboard, and other gadgetry that turns the bow into a sort of wireless mouse for music. The Kevlar and carbon-fiber bow, developed in cooperation with CodaBow, weighs and feels the same as a regular bow. “I don’t want to ask the musician to take a step backward to access the technology,” McMillen says.
Over a Bluetooth connection, the bow’s sensors convey information to the K-Apps software suite about how the bow is being used and where it is relative to the instrument; the software uses the information to control such digital tools as signal processors, looping, and other sound effects. The bow can indicate to the computer whether it’s being played at the frog or tip, how far it is from the bridge, how it’s tilted, how much hair tension there is, how fast and in what direction it’s moving, and how firmly the player is gripping it.
The bow also can sense when it’s being shaken or moved in space away from the instrument.
The player sets K-Apps to associate
certain bow positions or gestures with
specific electronic events. For example, the player can shake the bow, play close to the bridge, or change bow speed to produce echoes, modulations, reverberations, or time delays. Vary the amount of bow to manipulate a video, or abruptly move the bow away from the instrument to start a prerecorded loop. But that doesn’t rule out using the bow the old-fashioned way at the same time by setting multiple parameters—say, bow pressure controls the wah only if the bow is
a certain distance from the bridge.
“All of these things can be quite dramatic,” says McMillen. “This system is for the violinist who wants to perform work that’s more encompassing and more sonically filled and experimental than the traditional repertoire.
“This system is meant to be inspiring, and a little whimsical.”
Learn more about the K-Bow at keithmcmillen.com.
Price Buys Out Tarisio Partners
Jason Price is now sole owner of Tarisio, the ten-year-old auction house that pioneered the online-sale format for stringed instruments. Price, who has served as managing partner at Tarisio overseeing day-to-day operations, bought out his two founding partners, Christopher Reuning and Dmitry Ginden. “The buyout is entirely friendly,” Price says. “They’re great colleagues and will continue as formal consultants going forward. It’s a nice, natural evolution. Chris and Dmitry [each] have a full plate
of interesting, high-level things going on.
“Tarisio has grown to a size that it needs constant attention.”
Price plans to increase the number of sales—February’s higher-end speculative and restorable sale was a new addition—and expand Tarisio’s private sales and European presence. “I intend to pull Tarisio into the 21st century of violin sales.”
Clients can look forward to expanded photo
archives, more information about historical
makers, and new technological advances—fancy
a Tarisio iPhone app, anyone? tarisio.com
Chronicle of a Coveted Collection
First off, Mr. Black’s Violins: The Extraordinary Obsession of Gerald Segelman, by Andrew Hooker (Cozio Publishing) is more about violins than obsession. And
it ignores the greed and legal wrangling that surrounded the highly contested sale of this
famous collection. The bulk of the book’s pages are devoted to luscious photographs and descriptions of 45 instruments from the spectacular collection
of Gerald Segelman, a rags-
to-riches businessman who used the alias Mr. Black. Segelman’s “staggering buying spree” started during World War II—the days when Stradivari violins sold for £1,200—and ended just before prices skyrocketed. He owned at least one violin by every important maker, about 100 rare instruments. Thanks to Segelman’s sketchy record keeping and secretive nature—he bought and sold constantly, stashing fiddles and bows in the cupboards and closets of several properties—the true extent of his collection can never be known.
The profiles of the instruments are interesting in that they offer the unvarnished truth about questions of condition and, occasionally, attribution. But while the profiles are a bit daring for the fine-violin world, the relatively scant introductory chapter makes no mention at all of the scandalous feeding frenzy that ensued among violin dealers on both sides of the Atlantic upon Segelman’s death at age 92. The court case brought by Segelman’s executors, which exposed the labyrinthine inner workings of the high-end violin business to public scrutiny, receives but a single, vague line.
The book was commissioned by a trustee of the estate.
Smithsonian Strad Study Nets Surprises
Has violin making changed or remained remarkably the same during the last 350 years? And within one maker’s career, how do ideas develop and change? Researchers at the Smithsonian Institution are starting to answer these and other questions by comparing CT scans of old violins. The Smithsonian team scanned and made digital models of seven Stradivari violins made between 1670 and 1707. The digital models allowed researchers to compare the volume of material used in the instrument, air volume inside the body, variations in thickness, and the exact shapes of the archings. “Obviously, we cannot take these instruments apart and study how they were made,” says Bruno Frohlich of the anthropology department at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
Researchers found that the volume of material in top and back plates varied by a surprising 41.6 percent while the air volume inside the body varied only 8.1 percent. In other words, Stradivari tried to keep the inside volume the same while using thinner and thinner plates.
Researchers plan to continue the project by analyzing CT scans of 47 other old instruments. Read the original Smithsonian article at http://blog.americanhistory.si.edu/osaycanyousee/2009/11/digital-stradivari-computer-models-of-violins-reveal-master-luthiers-techniques.html. | 
