Introduction
The project “buzzing strings/Resonant Beauty” is about exploring aesthetic choices related to tone production in string instrument playing, especially violin playing. I wanted to explore possibilities of sound conceptualized as beautiful, and challenge my learned concepts as what qualifies as a ‘beautiful’ tone production, the make and sound of an instrument, and testing biases that have been instilled through western classical musical pedagogy and canon.
The bane of many classically trained violinists is the "buzz". Any buzz or extraneous noise produced by a violin is likely seen as a flaw. These notions are engrained deeply into each violinist, or at least most of us. One friend walked off stage after a great performance and said, "Could you hear my bow noise?"
Of course, this is a bit of a generalization--each violinist is different in their taste, training, and aesthetic choices, but a vast majority of us have been ingrained with a kind of mantra of perfection. Occasionally you are allowed to express your own desires and wishes, but not too much. (history of violin ped)
I don't want to exclude a traditionally beautiful violin sound production from what I consider to be beautiful. That would be against the impetus behind the research. The beginning of Gil Shaham's Prokofiev Concerto no. 2 is one of my favorite iterations of a violinist's G-string sound. What my project seeks to do, however, is broaden our sense of what kinds of tone can be considered beautiful from the violin.
How can resonances be explored by embracing a buzz?
The answer I found came from the inspiration of a renaissance harp, metal resonators, and preparing a violin full of buzzes.
Through the expansion of palette and timbre possibilities by preparing violins, I was able to create an instrument that I felt more comfortable as an exploration partner. My primary instrument is beautiful, both in a classical and sentimental way, but the prepared violin allowed me to place metal in ways I could not with my primary violin, and it also did not hold some "baggage" (as I will call it right now) associated with traditional, classical, violin sound production.
The function of this "research" or study is the _production of non-knowledge_ as Peter Ablinger puts it. It is not to come to any kind of conclusions or ending--no black and white statements about the good sound or bad sound. It is about creating a space where I am able to be thoughtful about my own engrained monochrom, and in the "Essay on Buzzing Strings" how this translates to my personal life at the time.
You will see in many of the improvising videos with several different prepared violins that I will never really successfully become untrained. The way I move, my physical relationship to the violin will always have some kind of engrained biases. However, the process of de-robing and redressing has provided a thoughtful path to a way of improvisation, expanded sound production, and embracing what some may think of as an error or mistake as an integral part of compositional beauty.
Peter Ablinger, Can Art Be Research, or: "What We Cannot Describe Is What Makes Us Happy," 2017.