Violinists cannot differentiate between Stradivarius and new violins, was: "golden ears" Options

[kraut]

not so golden after all:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocke...s-and-new-ones/

What’s more, no one has tested whether violinists themselves can truly pick up the supposedly distinctive sound of a Strad. The common wisdom is that they can, but Fritz and Curtin showed that this isn’t true. “Many people were convinced that as soon as you play an old violin, you can feel that it’s old, it’s been played a lot, and it has a special sound quality,” says Fritz. “People who took part in the experiment said it was the experience of a lifetime when we told them the results. They were fully convinced they could tell the difference, and they couldn’t.”

Having read the article first in the German "der spiegel", I do not have to wait for the usual excuse of those that will maintain those listening tests were done wrong, the wrong violins were chosen etc.etc., all the usual bull those of the golden ear persuasion come up with to not have to accept test results that speak counter to their religion that "everything influences sound and everything is audible".

The test was a true “double-blind” one, as neither the players nor the people who gave them the violins had any way of knowing which instrument was which. The room was dimly lit. The players were wearing goggles so they couldn’t see properly. The instruments had dabs of perfume on the chinrests that blocked out any distinctive smells. And even though Fritz and Curtin knew which the identities of the six violins, they only passed the instruments to the players via other researchers, who were hidden by screens, wearing their own goggles, and quite literally in the dark.

It seems to me reading through the article, that just about everything had been done to eliminate bias by double blind testing.

There are some issues with the study. Curtin, being a maker of new violins, has an obvious bias, but the double-blind design should have prevented that from affecting the results. The sample size – six violins and 21 players – is fairly small, but as large as can be expected when dealing with rare and incredibly expensive objects. There might also other variables that could affect the players’ perceptions – perhaps, for example, they might feel differently in rooms with different acoustics.

This post has been edited by kraut: Jan 3 2012, 07:08

[mzil]

^OOPs, I missed that, sorry. My bad.
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I wonder if a trained person could tell by the flex of the neck, the smoothness of the wood surface, the squishiness of the chin rest or the size of its chin indentation crater...
the weight, [The taste of the nylon vs catgut strings.... Yuck.]

My point is you have to have an expert on violin construction who can point these things out which the test researchers may be clueless about.

I know nothing about violins.
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edit to add:

>implying the violinists were privy to the identities of the instruments

Could be at a subconscious level, too. They weren't "cheating" per say, but the heft of the real thing could have still influenced them.

This post has been edited by mzil: Jan 5 2012, 01:59

[MichaelW]

My point is you have to have an expert on violin construction who can point these things out which the test researchers may be clueless about.

The instigator of the test is an apparently highly-regarded violin maker; the article says that the trust the violinists had in him was crucial to their participation. The article also points out that he had an interest in demonstrating the high quality of modern violins, but the procedures should have prevented that from influencing the results.

But what you say about knowledge of the instrument affecting the way people play is surely true. In the two samples linked from the article, it's clear the violinist plays the modern instrument with more vibrato--whether consciously or not, who can tell. But anyhow, it is likely that violinists who accept these results will still want to play an old Italian instrument. Given what an extraordinarily demanding task playing a violin must be, they're entitled to whatever help placebo will give them; athletes have lucky socks, why not let musos have talismanic fiddles. As long as we know it's the playing that counts.