Friday, March 25, 2011

Violin vs. Piano #1

As I mentioned before, I consider myself a pianist who is now learning the violin. As I become more familiar with this second instrument, I'm discovering definite differences between them. Here's my new favorite: ringing notes on the violin!

The sound a violin (and other string instruments) produce comes from vibrating strings. Each string vibrates at a particular pitch (hopefully, an actual note!). When a string of a violin is vibrating at a certain frequency, it also vibrates at multiples of those frequencies. (Our ear is simply in tune to a limited range of frequencies.) If one of those frequencies happens to be a multiple of the frequency of another violin string, that second string will also vibrate. This is referred to as "string resonance" & "sympathetic vibration".* While pianos are tuned in order to take advantage of this phenomenon, it's much easier to hear on the violin.

Recently, I've been practicing Song of the Wind, which has a lot of phrases that end on open "E" strings. It's really cool to hear the ringing "E" before going on to the next phrase. I think I'm falling in love with the violin.

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* I knew that the math lecture I went to fall semester freshman year would some day turn out to be useful. However, I accept all the blame for errors in this and all future explanations.

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