Musician creates products to change violin’s sound

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Music lovers swoon at the sweet sounds that can come from the best violins. A relatively new theory is that the type of resin you apply to the bow has the power to change an instrument's sound. A team in regional New South Wales is running with that and custom making rosin with a passion. They say this approach is an Australian first.

Transcript

00:00 A rosin is a small piece of pine tree sap in a little casing such as this, and it's

00:08 rubbed onto the hair of the bow, which is right there, and it creates a friction between

00:14 the bow hair and the strings of the violin, which in turn makes it sound.

00:20 And so when did you come across the notion that different rosins can create or have the

00:25 power to create quite a different sound?

00:28 Well, from my career as a violinist and experimenting with many different rosins, I decided to start

00:34 to make my own, purely for fun really.

00:38 And it was through that process that I tried lots of different ingredients and realised

00:44 that by changing the ingredients and mixing them in different ways, you could really change

00:49 the way your instrument responded.

00:51 And so how do you believe that this works in actually creating a different sound?

00:57 What's going on at a micro level?

01:00 Well I'm not a chemist, but different rosins or resins, as they come out of the tree, from

01:07 different countries and types of soil and different types of extraction methods and

01:13 different distillation methods they go through, create a wide variety of products that have

01:18 different stickiness.

01:19 So essentially the rosin grabs the violin string, pulls it and releases it to create

01:25 the vibration.

01:26 So if you have a stronger stickiness, you have a different kind of vibration which makes

01:30 a different quality of sound.

01:31 Okay, so can you demonstrate this for us?

01:35 Absolutely.

01:36 So I have one bow here that has absolutely no rosin on it at all.

01:41 And this is what it would sound like if you played without rosin.

01:46 Right.

01:48 Beautiful.

01:51 And this is a bow with our wonderful rosin on and this is what it would sound like.

02:10 Okay so unfortunately we didn't really pick that up here.

02:14 I'm sure it sounded brilliant but for some reason we were unable to get that.

02:20 So can you give us an idea without compromising your secrets about what ingredients you vary?

02:27 Yeah, it's actually just the different resins that we get from different suppliers and different

02:36 forests all over the world really.

02:37 And they just, we profile them individually.

02:39 So we do a lot of testing on the instruments and we profile them for particular sound and

02:45 response characteristics and then we blend many of those ingredients together in order

02:50 to fine tune a particular, I guess, colour palette for a particular rosin recipe.

02:57 And we didn't get you to play with two different bows with different resins on them but you

03:04 say, because you said one bow didn't have any resin on it at all, but you can definitely

03:09 tell the difference between the two different resins?

03:14 It's certainly a difference that players can tell.

03:17 An audience might not perceive a difference as such because it still sounds like a violin

03:23 with different types of rosin on.

03:25 But for a player it might mean that in a large concert hall by changing the recipe they're

03:30 able to project further and have more clarity of sound go further back in the concert hall.

03:36 Or for example someone playing in a section in an orchestra who wants to blend their sound

03:41 in with their colleagues and not stand out could change the rosin in order to have a

03:45 more softer and warmer sound on their instrument.

03:48 And you believe it can help with other challenges like humidity even?

03:52 Yeah, absolutely.

03:54 So in very humid climates such as Hong Kong for example, the pores of the wood of the

04:02 instrument can absorb a lot of moisture and it can have less response and sound a bit

04:06 sluggish, so we can make a very, very crisp recipe that will brighten up the sound in

04:12 that circumstance.

04:14 And what are the plans for your little business there?

04:17 Is that your kind of cooking area behind you where you warm the sap?

04:23 That's it.

04:24 So we are alchemists I guess you could say and we do have a... it's a fairly messy and

04:28 sticky business so it is a bit of a mess after a day's work here, but that's exactly what

04:35 we do.

04:36 We have a small workshop in an old orchard shed here near Orange and there's a small

04:40 team of about five of us here who just work to manufacture the rosins and assemble the

04:45 products and ship them to our clients all over the world.

04:49 And so are you basically a full-time rosin maker now and have stopped playing or are

04:54 you still performing every now as a violinist?

04:57 I do perform a little bit.

04:59 I do still play, but it's no longer my career.

05:02 But we do have to play a lot with clients and in testing the recipes.

05:07 So my chops are still supple I guess you could say.

05:11 Good stuff.

05:12 Andrew, good on you.

05:13 Good luck with the business and thanks so much for having a chat to us.

05:15 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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