My partner makes violin bows for a living, and makes about $50,000 a year.
|
|
He invented new dulcimer-like amplified instruments he calls chordsticks, that feature strings that can be struck (with No. 2 pencils) or bowed (with child-size-violin bows).
|
|
If it can keep your poodle warm, it can keep you warm We use horse hair for violin bows, sheep's wool for literally everything that requires warming and goat's hair to make the scarf of choice for rich old ladies.
|
|
The 440-page report chronicles teachers doling out physical violence including slapping boys in the face so hard that the marks could be seen the next day, whipping them with wooden sticks and violin bows and subjecting them to severe beatings.
|
|
Plain and figured Australian blackwood is used in musical instrument making (in particular guitars, drums, Hawaiian ukuleles, violin bows and organ pipes), and in recent years has become increasingly valued as a substitute for koa wood.
|
|
John Philip Sousa conducting with a baton (1911). Before the use of the baton, orchestral ensembles were conducted from the harpsichord or the first violin lead. Conductors first began to use violin bows or rolled pieces of paper before the modern baton was introduced.
|
|
Two-person saws, also called "misery whips", can also be played, though with less virtuosity, and they produce an octave or less of range. Most sawists use cello or violin bows, using violin rosin, but some may use improvised home-made bows, such as a wooden dowel.
|
|
Heads of three violin bows. Top: Late 18th-century Tourte-style. Middle: swan-bill head of a long 18th-century model. Bottom: pike-head of a 17th-century model Baroque bows generally look straight or bent slightly outwards in the middle, with an elegant "swan-bill" pointed head.
|
|
He performed as a soloist and collaborated with many important musicians, such as Glenn Gould. In 1967 he recorded with Duke Ellington on Ellington’s "North of the Border" album. He adjudicated at festivals including "Canadian Open Old Time Fiddlers' Contest" 1955-84. Sumberg was also known for his collection of fine violin bows.
|
|
The curve in the wood was created by heating the wood thoroughly and then bending it. Before Tourte, bows had been cut to the desired bend. The final important change credited to Tourte is the screw in the nut to moderate the tension in the hair. This propelling and withdrawing screw is found on virtually all modern violin bows.
|
|
Nicknamed "Starvin' Marvin" for 180 pounds on a 6–6 frame, Freeman worked at Chicago's John Norwood Lee Co. making concert-quality violin bows, while attending Chicago Vocational High School. Freeman played collegiately at Jackson State University. In 1983, he played collegiate summer baseball with the Chatham A's of the Cape Cod Baseball League. He was drafted as the #2 pick of the Philadelphia Phillies in 1984.
|
|
Heads of three violin bows: (upper) transitional (F. Tourte), swan-bill head of a long 18th-century model, pike-head of a 17th- century model A violin is usually played using a bow consisting of a stick with a ribbon of horsehair strung between the tip and frog (or nut, or heel) at opposite ends. A typical violin bow may be overall, and weigh about . Viola bows may be about shorter and heavier.
|
|
Dalley's craft and skill produce violin bows that are in high demand because of their quality and rarity. In 1997, when the first violinist Steinhardt wrote his book about the quartet, he stated that the finest bows made by the great bow makers could sell for upwards of $100,000 each. All bows are not alike. The bow is matched to the artist's technique and to the instrument being played, and even to arm length and strength.
|
|
The population of Ashley in the 1860s was just over 500 people.John Marius Wilson, (1870–72), Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870–72) William Charles Retford, who became a maker of violin bows, was born in Ashley in 1875. He would later publish his memories of growing up in Ashley: > I was born (June 1875) in a cottage in what is now Ashley Road; situated > south of the lane at the base of the hill by the brook.
|
|
They also engaged in an exchange of goods (), trading things like animal skins for knives and other valuables. Brazilwood was highly valued in Europe where it was used to make violin bows (especially the Pau de Pernambuco variety) and for the red dye it produced. Countries like France, which disagreed with the Treaty of Tordesillas (a papal bull decreed by the Spanish-born Pope Alexander VI in 1493 which sought to divide South America between the Spanish and the Portuguese), launched many attacks on the coast to steal the wood. Soon after their arrival, Portuguese settlers began to displace native peoples and enslave them as field laborers, leading to conflicts in which many natives died.
|
|
The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, Volume III: London, 1757–1775 – Faults in Songs With the Franklin design, it is possible to play ten glasses simultaneously if desired, a technique that is very difficult if not impossible to execute using upright goblets. Franklin also advocated the use of a small amount of powdered chalk on the fingers, which under some acidic water conditions helped produce a clear tone. Some attempted improvements on the armonica included adding keyboards, placing pads between the bowls to reduce sympathetic vibrations, and using violin bows. Another supposed improvement claimed in ill-informed post-period observations of non-playing instruments was to have the glasses rotate into a trough of water.
|
|
For three years (1961–1964) he also held a post in the Utah Symphony, which at the time consisted of part-time musicians. He also served an enlistment in the United States Army before marriage and his 1965 founding of a violinmaking shop, the Violin Making School of America, in which he made violins, cellos and violas. In 1972 he began accepting students, transforming the violinmaking shop into a true instructional laboratory. He later expanded this instruction to the fabrication of violin bows (1998), with the founding of the Bow Making School of America. He continued in these endeavors until his 2006 retirement, at which time he sold the school to a former student (graduated 1991), Charles Woolf.
|
|
Gossett notes that these early works were written at a time when "[t]he deposited mantles of Cimarosa and Paisiello were unfilled" – these were Rossini's first, and increasingly appreciated, steps in trying them on. The Teatro San Moisè in Venice, where his farse were first performed, and the La Scala Theatre of Milan which premiered his two-act opera La pietra del paragone (1812), were seeking works in that tradition; Gossett notes that in these operas "Rossini's musical personality began to take shape ... many elements emerge that remain throughout his career" including "[a] love of sheer sound, of sharp and effective rhythms". The unusual effect employed in the overture of Il signor Bruschino, (1813) deploying violin bows tapping rhythms on music stands, is an example of such witty originality.
|
|
The bow is held underhand (palm up), similar to a German double bass bow grip, but away from the frog towards the balance point. The stick's curvature is generally convex as were violin bows of the period, rather than concave like a modern violin bow. The "frog" (which holds the bowhair and adjusts its tension) is also different from that of modern bows: whereas a violin bow frog has a "slide" (often made of mother of pearl), which pinches the hair and holds it flat and stationary across the frog, viol bows have an open frog that allows more movement of the hair. This facilitates a traditional playing technique where the performer uses one or two fingers of the bow hand to press the hair away from the bow stick.
|
|
The Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments, held by the University of Michigan's School of Music, Theatre & Dance in Ann Arbor, Michigan, consists of over 2,500 historical and contemporary musical instruments from around the world. The basis of the Collection is a gift made to the University by pharmaceutical businessman Frederick Stearns in 1898."Gift to Michigan University - Collection of Musical Instruments Presented by Frederick Stearns", The New York Times, November 29, 1898 Known internationally as a unique research collection,Coover, James. Musical Instrument Collection Catalogues and Cognate Literature, Information Coordinators, 1981 its holdings include the trumpet collection of Armando Ghitalla, former principal trumpet player of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and University of Michigan faculty member; a collection of violin bows from Jerry Tetewsky; as well as Robert Moog's first commercially produced Moog synthesizer from 1964 and the RCA theremin used during the WXYZ broadcasts of the Green Hornet from 1936-1952.
|
|
" The possibilities offered by homemade instruments prompted Frith to start creating his own guitars, basically slabs of wood on which he mounted a pickup, a bridge, and strings stretched over metal screws. "The basic design of the instrument is supposed to be as rudimentary and flexible as possible," Frith said, "so I can use an electric drill to bore holes into the body of it to achieve certain sounds ... ." Frith uses a variety of implements to play guitar, from traditional guitar picks to violin bows, drum sticks, egg beaters, paint brushes, lengths of metal chain, and other found objects. Frith remarked: "It's more to do with my interest in found objects and the use of certain kinds of textures which have an effect on the string ... the difference between the touch of stone, the touch of glass, the touch of wood, the touch of paper – those kinds of basic elements that you're using against the surface of the strings which produce different sounds.
|
|