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Spider Silk Spun Into Violin Strings
jones_supa writes "A Japanese researcher wanted to see how spider silk would convert to strings of a violin. Dr. Shigeyoshi Osaki of Nara Medical University used 300 female Nephila maculata spiders to provide the dragline silk. For each string, Osaki twisted thousands of individual strands of silk in one direction to form a bundle. The strings were then prepared from three of these bundles twisted together in the opposite direction. The final product withstood less tension before breaking than a traditional gut string, but more than an aluminum-coated, nylon-core string. This kind of spider-string is described as having a 'soft and profound timbre.'"
And catch lunch at the same time! No more starving musicians!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I need a pithy quip involving spiders and violins. Where is the Phil Silvers handbook of humor when you need it?! Damn!
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
They sound like the horrific screams of a thousand terrified flies.
Imagine the possiblities for 8-legged pizzicato.
Come to think of it, I am not especially fond of pizzicato.
Somehow that doesn't make sense to me. Gut strings are somewhat delicate. They have been largely replaced by nylon cores flat-wound with flat wire (aluminum or silver) for old instruments, and more modern instruments that can stand the high tension are wound on steel cores. I thought that nylon core strings could stand higher tension that gut strings. They certainly last longer. Nobody uses gut any more.
TFA includes a sample that I found intriguingly mellow yet possessing a pleasing range of overtones. It seems that Dr. Osaki is branching out a bit with his technique for harvesting the silk draglines, but I wonder just how practical it is to produce these strings on a large scale. It might be initially that we would see them only on very high-end instruments.
If you are wondering how it sounds you can check here.
TFA says '3000 to 5000' strands of silk just to make one of the three strings that are twisted the other way (just like a class three-strand rope). I'm duly astonished - I knew spider silk was skinny, but it must be much smaller than I had ever envisioned. So I looked it up, and found stated diameters from 0.15 mm (small, but macro) down to the finest at 10 nanometers!
I also learned about work from 2003 using that 10 nm silk as a core to make hollow optical fiber, which they hoped to make fiber with a diameter of only 2 nm.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Imagine the possiblities for 8-legged pizzicato.
Was just about to write this! Completely agree. Then use PureData to amplify, delay, slowdown and multiply this...
Someone found a good use for spiders!
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Here's a link to the page with the audio if that's what interests you the most.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17243105
Now we know what a goblin spider's shamisen sounds like.
I don't know how many times I've sat around a bong with friends late at night where the conversation has come back to the age-old "wouldn't it be cool if we could make our violin strings from the silk spiderwebs of the Nephila maculata spider?" Seems like every other late-night gathering of the crowd meanders back to this question at some point, doesn't it? I'll bet we've hit some of those "torsional strength in counter-twisted pairs" arguments fifteen or twenty times themselves. Heh. Good times.
But this guy . . . he hears the question, and he just takes it into his head to go out and find the answer to it. No matter how much work it takes, no matter how difficult it might be, he just keeps at it with a dogged perseverance until he owns it!
And so, for the last five weeks since we found out about him, nobody wants to party anymore. All of the years of good gatherings, good conversations - ended. Over. We all just sit at home now, alone and bored. And angry. Boy, are we angry. I mean, what are we gonna talk about now?!! Nobody ASKED him to answer this question, did they?
Fucker.
WTF?
"Hiyo !! We be spinnin silk for de vyolyn"
Which language is that?
Isn't it hard to play after your fingers get stuck to the string?
Spider silk body armor.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Fishing with kites and spider silk
http://sciencestage.com/v/5685/hd:-spider-web-fishing-south-pacific-bbc-two.html
love is just extroverted narcissism
Doesn't this researcher know all the materials science industry cares about right now is what you can do with carbon nanotubes? Spider silk is so 90's.
Man, I feel old.
(kidding, not trolling. except the old part)
I always wondered where they got strings so thin for the world's smallest violin. Now I know...
Interestingly, the best current source of spider silk today are genetically engineered goats which produce the protein in breast milk. Fiddle with nature indeed.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Someone (Monster Cable maybe?) needs to jump on this immediately. The "soft and profound timbre" description is a good start, but there is a big stinking pile of ready-made audiophile terms to describe the sonic qualities of everyday things made from esoteric materials. Sure the folks who've convinced millions to pay (far too much) good money for audio cables would be a godsend to the spider-silk violin string market.
What if we could some how extract the protiens from snake oil and make strings with that? snakes are long and tough, and some of them make cool noises. Maybe we could rub snake oil into the wood as well.
Whenever you hear something about violin sound, your BS meter should be going off the scale. Many tests have shown that professional musicians have a really hard time distinguishing between new and old instruments, strativaris or modern copies, etc. Almost all violins are made with the same materials and are copies of the same designs. So long as they meet some baseline of quality in construction and materials, it becomes largely a matter of personal preference for the performer in terms of what sound they like and what instrument they want to play.
Also everytime I hear 'audiophiles' talk about the qualities of a particular sound (i.e. 'soft and profound timbre') it makes me want to gag. What a load of BS. If you can't be specific in the differences in sound quality (better sustain, flatter frequency response) it's probably because there _aren't_ any differences. If it can't be measured with a 'scope, it's probably just not there. Go take some homeopathic medicine for your magic ears.
Ze Atomic Device! It iz Ztolen!
However, all evidence is that people want cheap rather than good, so I don't expect these to come on market any time soon. Besides, those with no hearing will complain (as indeed I note they already have) that they can't hear the difference, actual measurements notwithstanding.
Having said that, it would be interesting to see what material science can do to work on the concept. Spider silk is good but fragile - making it suitable for a single performance at The Proms at the Albert Hall but not really useful for musicians in general. A tougher synthetic version is definitely needed, along with other strings of other materials with other sounds.
Ideally, there would be a single model you could produce where you could feed in the material properties and then synthesize the tonal properties. People shopping for strings could then choose by hearing rather than by popular opinion.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)