September 11, 2007

• New Arrival.

  Huzzah!

  I received the notice in the mail yesterday that my new electric violin had arrived at the post office, so I went and picked it up today.  I was not impressed by having to pay $21.85 cash or debit for customs.  I brought it home and took it out.  For a cheapo model, I must say I'm somewhat impressed.  It came with the strings loose, the bridge disassembled and wrapped in paper for protection, the e-string fine tuner uninstalled, all for shipping safety.  I had to spend much of the afternoon putting it together while juggling more thesis writing so I didn't get to go down to the local gym as I had planned.  As a new violin, the strings all had to be stretched out somewhat and the pegs had to be worked in so that they'd retain a pitch without sliding out of tune; the bow had to be rosined and tightened for the first time.

  It's got a slim body and no f-holes, but I'm quite surprised how much sound it still manages to put out.  Knocking on the body, it obviously has a hollow-body; that helps the sound ring more.  I had€ to adjust the strings a bit to get good spacing between them.  Having 6 strings, it's got 6 pegs and a wider fingerboard, but it's still slightly more difficult to play without hitting other strings on the bow or fingerboard due to the reduced space between the strings and the different angle of each string due to the two extra lower strings.  The lower strings themselves vibrate quite a bit, as they have to be rather loose to achieve their respective lower pitches in the small length of a violin - I had some difficulty getting used to this, since that extra give on the string makes it much easier to accidentally hit the adjacent strings.  Before I adjusted the spacing of the C string (Yes, it's got extra C and F strings on top of the standard E A D and G) on the bridge and evened out the strings, it was exceedingly difficult to play on only the C string without the bow brushing up against the F-string.  On the other hand, I got a kick out of how easy it was to play 6-stringed chords, an impossible feat on a traditional violin.  The F string, being so loose, is difficult to keep a clear tone on - a trained viola player might have less difficulty with the adjustment.

  Additionally, one pet peeve I had was that the port for the headphone jack was located directly under where the shoulderpad would go.  The violin didn't come with a shoulderpad, but I dug an old Kun pad out of my other violin's case and installed that on the new electric violin.  The only way the shoulderpad would stay on was if I switched the included headphones (which had a really long jack) with my ipod headphones (for which the jack does not jut out quite as much) - but I still feel I might have to secure the pad more with some rubber bands.  That, or perhaps buy a new shoulderpad.

  The case also came with an output cable for the violin, but I still need to get a portable amp.  For the time being, I'll have to suffice with the headphones, but I can't wait to test out the capacities of the new fiddle.

  Alright!  Back to writing about the implications of functional neuroimaging studies of hallucinations, dreams, cross-modal sensory effects, and habituation upon the distinction between higher-level cognition and sensory experience.

  • 11:03 pm
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