A perceptual experiment was designed to investigate how consistent violinists are at evaluating violin quality. The objective was to examine both intra- and inter-subject consistency across a certain range of violins. Skilled classical violinists were asked to play a set of different violins, evaluate their quality, and order them by preference. Violins of different periods were used, varying from student to performance level. Low light conditions and dark sunglasses were used to hide the identity of the instruments as much as possible. Considering the bow as an extension of the player, violinists carried out the task using their own bow. Upon completing the task, participants had to comment on the ranking process and provide rationale for their choices. Preliminary results from a pilot study indicate that both intra- and inter-subject consistency are high when violinists are presented a small group of instruments that are fairly distinct from one another. Results of a more indepth study (with more instruments, some very similar to one another) will be presented at the conference.
Charalampos Saitis: Evaluating violin quality: How consistent are skilled players?
Charalampos Saitis holds an MA from the Sonic Arts Research Center in Belfast, a Postgraduate Diploma in Music and Media Technology from Trinity College Dublin, and a BSc in Mathematics from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He is presently a PhD student at McGill University, working with Gary Scavone in the Computational Acoustic Modeling Laboratory. His research interests include musical acoustics, perception of string instrument quality, acoustic measurements of string instruments, and sound synthesis.
November 08, 2010
12:00 - 13:00