MIDI Violin

Modeled in Rhino 3D

Rendered with Adobe Dimension CC

2020

I started learning violin29 years ago. I am by no means an expert but after college, I started to mix my love of violin performance with my interest in electronic music. As I got more into music production, I started to fall in love with sound design and synths as well as musical interfaces. I have always toyed with the idea of a synth interface that could capture the physical input from a musician. The violin is a musical tool that gives the user immense control of sound envelopes. When used in tandem, the bow and violin strings can create soft attacks, incredibly hard attacks, sustain notes, apply varying speeds of vibrato, and more. Using your finger, you can create guitar-like notes with pizzicato.

Plus, there is an extremely theatrical physicality to playing the violin. A violin maestro is often pictured messaging notes out of his violin or violently assailing the violin with lashes from the bow and a whirlwind of hammering fingers up and down the fingerboard. It is as much a visual experience as it is a musical one.

I have seen instances of MIDI violins like my Fourness Fuse 4-string, the original Zeta, or the Cantini which use input from their piezo pickups that is then converted into MIDI. The concept I created here is more like the MIDI violin digital input controller devised by Henry Hun Tao for his Thesis at Rochester Institute of Technology.

I love my Fourness Fuse electric violin but I have had strings break on me like a normal violin would do and, in truth, it feels like an electric violin with a MIDI capability slapped onto it (zero offense to the creator though, it is still a magnificent instrument). That being said, I see music controllers for wind instruments and guitars. Like wind musicians, string players spend years mastering how to manipulate the sustain of a note. Violinists were made for playing a synth.

My design utilizes a traditional violin format, however, unlike the design of Henry Hun Tao, I went for a hard style fingerboard with position sensing strings instead of the soft interface he opted for (using ROLI Seaboard interfacing). I have played a ROLI Seaboard and it is an inspiring device, however, I cannot imagine my left hand maneuvering over a soft fingerboard and I do not necessarily see how the pressure sensitivity on my left-hand would give me more musical control.

I did use his pressure sensitive roller approach his design uses. The resistance of the rollers can be calibrated to imitated the feeling of a rosined horse-hair bow against a nickel-wound violin string. And each roller would sense the downward pressure exerted by the violinists right hand to increase volume and affect the notes envelope.

I included fine tuners that would act as rotary buttons for synth/daw/effect control.

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