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Set-up - a four part introduction Part 1 Part 2 Part 4 Part 3: Tone Production at the Point of Contact The last two articles in this series will concentrate on tone production and how the most crucial parts of an instrument’s set-up can be made to work well. I have a rule of thumb for thinking about tonal adjustments: the closer you get to the point of contact between bow hair and string, the bigger the impact of any adjustment will be. The actual point of contact where bow hair, rosin and string meet is where the player’s energy enters the instrument. If bow hair and strings are not working well, all our efforts to produce a beautiful tone will be undermined at source. Bow hair and Rosin Everybody knows that if you try to play with fresh, un-rosined bow hair, the instrument will make no sound at all. But a surprising number of people (mainly students) don’t realise that to work well the bow hair must be in good condition and have just the right amount of rosin on it. A few years ago I helped to secure a loan instrument for a very talented school-aged cellist. The girl and her father called round one day to say thank you and demonstrate the cello. It sounded nice but some notes seemed not to speak very easily. I tried the cello and to my surprise I could hardly get a note out of it and certainly couldn’t tell whether it was well adjusted. The bow had no grip whatsoever! How could such a capable player work with a bow that was completely slippery? And what is the most tactful way to say, ‘This bow needs rosin - or a re-hair - or both’? On another occasion I re-haired a bow for a family friend who was studying the violin at college. He phoned the next day and we had the following conversation: ‘Robin, what did you do to my violin?’ ‘Um . . . , I didn’t do anything to it John.’ ‘Are you sure you didn’t move the sound post or something?’ ‘Yes I’m sure. All I did was re-hair your bow.’ ‘It can’t make that much difference can it? My violin sounds completely different.’ While preparing this article I spoke to a number of teachers to see if these problems are as endemic as my experience leads me to believe. The answer was an overwhelming ‘yes’, so here is a summary of their advice for students: How can I tell if I am using too much rosin? Too much rosin doesn’t sound good. It produces a rough, gritty sound and makes smooth bow changes and string crossings difficult. Clouds of rosin dust issue from the point of contact and after playing there is a noticeable deposit of rosin dust on the varnish in the bridge area which must be dusted off. This situation usually occurs immediately after the bow has been rosined and so is relatively easy to recognize and is easily remedied by playing the instrument without rosining the bow further. It is probably the avoidance of over-rosining, however, that leads to the much more common and insidious problem - too little rosin. How can I tell if I am using too little rosin? This problem is more difficult to detect as it’s all too easy to adapt to the gradual decrease in a bow’s effectiveness as its loading of rosin becomes depleted. Eventually the bow becomes quite skaty, like walking on a slippery pavement in winter and it becomes impossible to produce good staccato. How much should I rosin my bow? Well it all depends. But if a rule of thumb is needed then a single lick down the bow is easily enough for a long practice session and a professional orchestral player found that a double lick (down and up) was usually enough for a whole day’s work. But what about when the hair is new? When the hair on a bow is new it is necessary to establish a balanced loading of rosin and to play the hair in. The hair does change in the first few hours of playing. At the beginning it doesn’t hold rosin properly and sounds very rough. An hour of really hard playing is usually sufficient for the hair to settle down and if you are in a hurry, ten or fifteen minutes playing the loudest, most aggressive open string chords should get rid of the worst of the roughness. How do I know when I need a re-hair? Dirty or played out hair does not hold rosin effectively. In extreme cases it is difficult to get any grip, however much rosin is applied. In other cases you go very quickly from the gritty, over-rosined state back to the slippery state. A common problem for students is that the bow-hair becomes dirty or greasy before it is fully played out. Several teachers identified a propensity among children not only to close their hands round the stick and hair but also to rub the hair up and down on their necks and foreheads! Cleanliness certainly does play a large part in the longevity of bow hair and in this respect it may be that students need fresh hair more often than some active experienced players. One teacher asks parents to replace their offsprings’ strings and bow hair on an annual basis. Can you wash dirty bow hair? Some teachers swear that this is the only realistic way to keep children’s bow hair playable. I don’t recommend this method as there is a danger that the water, which travels very easily along horse hair by capillary action, will loosen the wedges at each end of the bow making a re-hair necessary anyway. If you do want to try washing, never use any cleaning agent other than water and soap. What sort of rosin should I use? Avoid the cheapest grades as cheap rosin can be unyielding and have an undesirable polishing effect on the hair. A cake of rosin lasts a long time so the annual cost of using good quality rosin is minimal. The most expensive rosins often have special playing characteristics that will suit some players and not others. Strings The influence of strings on tone production cannot be over-estimated; after all, it was the development of metal wound strings that triggered the evolution to the smaller sized violas and cellos that we consider standard today. The past ten years has seen a fresh series of innovations by string manufacturers, the details of which will be the topic of a future article. The choice of string type also makes a huge difference to the style of sound produced by an instrument. Of course the underlying qualities and characteristics of the instruments remain but the style of a set of strings can overlay the tonal character of the instrument in a similar way that the colour of an instrument’s varnish can overlay its visual character. A change of strings can give a completely different experience of an instrument under the bow and demand a new playing style. The case for replacing and caring for strings is just as compelling as the case for bow hair. Once a string has been played in a gradual loss of power and deterioration in tone quality is inevitably experienced as the string ages. Some players are incredibly sensitive to this personal diminuendo. A soloist friend who had an old Italian cello on loan was never quite satisfied with the projection of his instrument and would change an entire set of strings two weeks before any solo appearance. Many players do not have such an overt quest for power, especially when playing in chamber groups, but it can be very helpful to keep track of just how old a set of strings is because you can’t always tell by looking at them. I recently helped to adjust and rehabilitate a player’s second instrument to take on tour. We got it all glued up and nicely balanced with a new post but the cello still wasn’t as lively as it should have been. The final transformation was achieved with a fresh set of strings. Strings can acquire build up of rosin which may be detrimental to tone. In the first place it is always best to rub the rosin off with a duster or scrape it off with a finger nail. There is a technique for removing rosin using some form of alcohol (which dissolves rosin) on cotton wool. The danger is that the alcohol can damage the core of the string or the varnish of the instrument. The key to success is an extremely sparing use of alcohol. If the cotton wool it wet or even damp it is too much. The merest hint of alcohol vapour should be sufficient to soften the rosin and allow it to be rubbed off. Never store alcohol or any material that has had alcohol on it in an instrument case.
Fitting new or different strings does not always solve tonal problems, of
course. I was recently visited by a teacher who had spent a considerable
sum on strings in an attempt to recover the lovely mellow tone that her
cello had lost. The problem was with the sound post and easily resolved.
So if you feel that your instrument’s tone has deteriorated and you cannot
recover the lost sound by fitting a fresh set of the same make of strings
as you used before, then something else in your instrument’s set-up must
have changed and it is time to see a luthier. © Robin Aitchison 2001. Published in ESTA News & Views Autumn 2001 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into any form of retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, including photocopying and recording now known or devised hereafter, without the prior permission of Robin Aitchison |
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7 C A M B R I D G E R O A D, E L
Y, C A M B S , C B 7 4 H J |
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