Breaking into a World of Perfection

Abstract

Professional music journals frequently publish descriptions of newly registered patents concerning classical musical instruments. Only a few of the many proposals for innovation actually enter production. The large number of ideas for improving musical instruments such as the violin, the flute and the bassoon contrasts strikingly with the stability of the often age-old design of these instruments. Notably, the instruments of the symphony orchestra have basically retained their features since the mid-19th century. Compared with many other artefacts of Western culture, such stability in design and outlook is remarkable. Why is this? And what strategies do today’s innovation-seeking instrument makers use to break into this world of perfection? How, in other words, do they innovate and sell in a tradition-bound field? Moreover, how could insights in such strategies be valid for fields of technology-development in which tradition and craft have a similar significance? To address these questions, we examined music journals and, based on interviews and promotional literature, we explored the views and opinions of 12 instrument makers and promoters of unusually constructed flutes, bassoons, saxophones, violas, guitars and oboe-reeds. To account for their work, we will focus on the role of attachment to technology, on the go-betweens whose creative marginality enables them to connect technological and musical cultures and on the relevance of recasting tradition so as to innovate and sustain tradition at the very same time.

Effect of Instrument Structure Alterations on Violin Performance

“…Related studies suggest that performance fluency transfers to new instruments after a period of re-adjustment (Bijsterveld and Schulp, 2004), which we suggested may be a consequence of a process of updating the forward and inverse internal models (Wolpert et al, 2001). We aimed to investigate the extent to which an instrument can be structurally altered before its transparency breaks down.…”

“…After years of playing a particular instrument, players become attuned to its subtlest details and idiosyncrasies such that changing to any new instrument requires a period of re-adjustment (Bijsterveld and Schulp, 2004). From the perspective of action-perception coupling (Novembre and Keller, 2014), we suggest this re-adjustment period might be explained as a process of updating the forward and inverse internal models (Wolpert et al, 2001).…”

Reinventing folk instruments as educational tools: The case of the Shakuhachi

“…The development of music education is, and will continue to be, enriched by the creation of both hardware and software, a factor which applies equally to both the teaching and learning of traditional music. Modern technology should not be viewed as a substitute for traditional music; rather, engaging in the design of a new instrument, or changing the design of an existing instrument, can and should bring innovation and tradition closer together (Bijsterveld & Schulp, 2004). It is hoped that the project described here can pave the way for this to happen.…”

Unveiling the Dark Side of Tonewoods: A Case Study about the Musical Instrument Demand for the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra El Sistema

“…Without a doubt, musical instruments are devices that are continuously reconfigured and that can take us, metaphorically, to "a garden of possible forking paths" (Williams and Edge 1996, 2). When it becomes urgent to standardize musical products, either due to practical reasons or to industrial efficiency, variety is decreased, and there is a risk that the way in which musical instruments are made is homogenized (Barret 1998, in Bijsterveld andSchulp 2004).…”