Saturday, May 29, 2010

Age is a good thing?


Yesterday I was figuring out the string angle on the "Titan". As I said before it isn't straight. Anywhere. Viewed from the side, the ends of bottom of the belly are higher than around the c bouts. The cross arch is 15.5mm but the effective long arch is only 14mm. This came about from age. Hundreds of years, or maybe only a few until the violin took a set, and the string pressure pulls up on the ends of the belly and makes the bouts fuller and the long arch flatter. What this does for the string angle is make it flatter. Drawn out using the measurements for elevation and neck step, the string angle should be 157.9 with the 15.5 arch height. Using the effective 14mm arch the string angle flattens to 158.9. Nothing else changes. The nut is still 4mm above the line drawn from the bottom of the belly, and the eye of the scroll is still right on the center of the line drawn from the bottom of the back. Even the angle the neck is set at stays the same. Everyone(?) seems to feel that flatter is better for violin string angles so a warped out old Strad is better than a new one.
I don't know about warped out old people, but are old people in general better than younger ones? I'm transitioning to the older side (I don't feel different) so my view is biased. I'll go way out on a limb and say....well I won't say. Old people, young people, it doesn't really make a difference. People are just different no matter what. What age does do is add experience, and with experience should come wisdom. But that is not a given either. Some people have life easy and everything always goes right for them. Others go off on the wrong track and never get back.
Both of them may not be living the life they could if just let go of what they want, and try to do what God wants. It's a hard thing to do, especially with all the other "priorities" and obligations you have. It's a hard thing to do if you don't know how to listen to the tugs on your heart, to the voice telling you to stop, to go, to wait. I try to live my life with joy and compassion, but slow traffic and long hours at work play havoc with that! But I try.

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