< Previous page

In recent years, Bissinger has expanded his contacts to include instrument makers at the Violin Society of America's annual Oberlin Acoustics Workshop in Ohio. Bissinger teaches there at the invitation of Tao, the string designer.

Violin makers have traditionally been secretive about their methods, said Tao, an accomplished amateur violinist and director of research and development for musical string maker J. D'Addario & Co. But more are making public what they are learning, especially those applying technology to the process.

"The way to advance this is by sharing," Tao said.

That was the tone at ECU this month. Bissinger has long used a laser in his lab that maps the front and back motions on the surface of a violin, but he was offered a better look. A laser company, Polytec, asked him to use a three-laser array for a violin study. Typically, the trio of lasers are used in industrial and research settings to measure vibrations produced in such things as car doors and submarines.

The new system measures motion up and down and side to side, as well. Just as importantly, it shows precisely where vibrations occur, enabling Bissinger to translate motion into sound.

Bissinger jumped at the chance. So did Zygmuntowicz and other violin makers whom Bissinger has grown friendly at Oberlin.

"This is not a shiny, expensive box," Zygmuntowicz said, pointing to one of Bissinger's waiting research subjects. "It's a pulsating vibration field."

Art, science wed

During three days in Howell Science Building, everyone stayed busy. While waiting to take turns positioning heavily insured violins on the wall rack, Tao and the makers played the antique violins. Rising from Willemotte and Titian, snatches of Bach sonatas, Mendelssohn concertos and Bart-k duets warmed up the science building's drab hallways.

The old Italian violins are cherished for the ease with which they respond to musicians. Great players can create great sounds with less effort. The violins can be loud too, making it easier for soloists to be heard above an orchestra.

In Bissinger's lab a short walk away, acoustical engineer Vikrant Palan operated a different instrument -- Polytec's PSV-400 Scanning Micrometer, aiming its lasers at one hand-hewn treasure after another. He used lasers and a video camera to create virtual drawings of each instrument.

Then, with bright red beams of light, he marked 150 targets on his drawings of one side of a violin. One of Bissinger's graduate-student assistants or one of the makers rapped each instrument with a white plastic hammer tied to a rubber band to give it extra punch when released.

That allowed Palan to make 450 measurements, averaged at each target. The highly sensitive lasers captured motions smaller than nanometers, which are one-thousandth the width of a human hair.

To make the most of the violins while he had them, Bissinger also put them through CAT scans at ECU's medical center. That will enhance his view of the interior of each violin, including the shape, width and density of the parts. It will be months before he can make sense of the resulting data.

But science wowed the three violin makers and Tao, all of whom who traveled to Greenville to watch Bissinger work. One afternoon, Palan, the Polytec engineer, played three-dimensional movies based on vibration measurements made on the front plate of one violin. The images undulated, falling and rising to low peaks, looking at times like water in a rolling boil.

For a moment, artists and scientists diverged.

"That looks like a young girl walking on a beach," violin maker Joseph Regh, also from New York, said appreciatively.

"Oh man, it cannot be," Zygmuntowicz chimed in while staring at the screen. "It looks alive."

Bissinger saw something else. Was one particularly steep peak a measurement error or something odd about the surface of a violin? Then he appeared to remember how little time he had with the old Italians.

He collected himself.

"OK, OK, OK," he said, politely. "Are we ready to put on another violin?"

< Previous page