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Stringless Violin to Bring Soul to MIDI Music

Posted by michael on from the i-guess-that's-why-they-call-it-the-blues dept.

lperdue writes "Musicians complain that MIDI may be easy, but the results can be more than a bit cold and soul-less. This story from New Scientist says that Stanford Professor Charles Nichols believes his violin, sans strings will put the emotions back into MIDI music."

2 of 24 comments (clear)

  1. Nice try, but too specific by twilight30 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Take a good look at the graphic. I'd hate to see what other string players would have to use to get any mileage out of this: Can you imagine a cello in this style? A viola?

    Never mind what a guitarist would think. Then again, they already have much more flexibility -- with straight-ahead electric pickups, acoustic microphones and so forth.

    Hazarding a guess, I can't see many other violin players picking this up and saying it'd be all that useful. I'm not a musician, so this is just an opinion (uninformed to boot), but I have taken some public performance classes with jazz guitar and whatnot. I don't know how a classical fiddler would actively choose this over an electrified violin -- surely he or she would have to spend a lot of time finessing the MIDI code that something like this would generate.

    Wish him luck, surely, but don't hold your breath...

    And how does this stop people from putting crappy MIDI on their websites ? :)

    --
    ========================================
    Death will come, and will have your eyes
    -- Pavese
  2. Check out a similar project by divbyzero · · Score: 3, Informative

    My favorite prof Perry Cook had a similar project going at one time: the Rbow.

    --
    But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
    Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.