Today's WTH news involving Strad cellos.....

First real guitar teacher I had owned a store that sold a lotta orchestral instruments. I picked up a violin one day while waiting for a lesson, wondering what it would be like to play. Found out I had my choice of methods - no way, and no how  :laughing7:
 
A fretted violin is called a mandolin, and played with a pick. Might be more our speed.
 
I think the frets on "fretted" violins (other than viols de jamba...er..."leg viols" from pre-violin days) are more like the lines on a fretless bass.  I've never seen one in person, but they have to be either flush or damn close to flush with the fingerboard.  Otherwise, there's no way you're getting a finger in between some of those upper frets.  They might just serve as visual markers.

My teacher used to use electrical tape cut into itty bitty strips for that.  White-out also works if you have a steady hand, and it wears off the wood over time.  So as you get good at placing your fingers, your visual aid disappears.

Mandolins are somewhere in the ballpark of a violin and a 12-string guitar having unnatural inter-instrument-family relations.  8 strings, strung like a violin, fretted like a guitar, strummed like a guitar, sounds like someone plucking two violins in sync.
 
I seem to recall having seen violas de gamba fretted with gut strings tied around the neck.  Images I have seen of them, as well as reproductions of baroque-era mandolines, bear this out.  Probably predates tanged fretwire.

 
There's that. And what about these?

1200px-H500%401-62-0_1.jpg
 
I played violin in school, even though I've just graduated I haven't played much recently. But it definitely wouldn't be the same with frets...

In primary school when I first started learning my music teacher used to put little stickers of stars with faces where I have to put my fingers for first, second, third and fourth fingers. Good times!
 
Mandolin had double strung courses as early as the the 14th century. 12 string guitars didn't really exist until almost the dawn of the 20th century. It's more accurate to say the guitar got its idea from the mandolin than the other way around. 
 
Reading that article I was thinking, "who the hell buys CDs any more?". Then I saw that the date of the article is in 2004. Mystery solved.
 
Jumble Jumble said:
Reading that article I was thinking, "who the hell buys CDs any more?". Then I saw that the date of the article is in 2004. Mystery solved.
Click to expand...

I do. I actually have access to Spotify but never use it. I miss having the covers to look at while listening and when I want to take music on the go I put the mp3-version on a mp3-player. Listening on my phone never works for me. Bad reception, battery drained and so on.
 
Logrinn said:
Jumble Jumble said:
Reading that article I was thinking, "who the hell buys CDs any more?". Then I saw that the date of the article is in 2004. Mystery solved.
Click to expand...

I do. I actually have access to Spotify but never use it. I miss having the covers to look at while listening and when I want to take music on the go I put the mp3-version on a mp3-player. Listening on my phone never works for me. Bad reception, battery drained and so on.
Click to expand...
So do I. They're the only thing I can play in my truck. No Pandora or Sirius. No internet, either. What other way would I have something to sing to? :icon_biggrin:
 
I just use Google Play Music on my phone now and download all the music on to it to listen to even without data or reception. Funnily enough, even though I'm 18 and pretty much am right into technology, I still enjoy going to the shops and sifting through CDs.
 
How times have moved on.

Axkoa, mentioned that he still likes to go and sift through CDs. Nothing wrong with that but it gave me pause as I remembered seeing a shop in London, in my early 20s in the early 80s. They had early CDs of classical pieces and were really costly compared to vinyl LPs. I wondered if they would catch on at that price, though I could see the benefits.

Anyway, by around 86 CDs had come down to reasonable prices and by about the end of the decade vinyl was starting to be overtaken by them. People even started selling off their vinyl.

I still like CDs apart from the storage aspect of them. I might look into one of those lossless players and put the collection on to there for the home hi fi. A lot of it is on MP3 on SD Cards for the car.


 
I've got about 12,000 tunes stuffed into a 128GB thumbdrive with room left for expansion, most of them encoded in FLAC so they're lossless, just to give you an idea what capacities are good for.
 
Yes, I am thinking of moving towards some sort of Hi Res system when funds allow. Of course with the CDs, you can't put information that is not there to start with but a lossless rip such as FLAC ought to get the digital files onto a system with the same quality as on the disc.

 
Lot to be said for being able to stash so many CDs worth of music in such a small space. Girl I know in Germany has modified her I-Phone (or I-Pad? I dunno) to have 1TB of storage, which means she can not only carry a truckload of music, she can play it easily as well. With that kind of storage, you can conceivably carry the collected works of damn near an entire genre around with you anywhere you go.
 
Or you can have an internet connection and have the collection of, well everything. Give or take.

And Kittin pictures, so many kitties...  :sad1:
 
I still prefer physical media.  I have a music server with 775GB of music (in FLAC) on it that died (and not a good backup). Glad I still have the 2500 CDs
 
TBurst Std said:
I still prefer physical media.  I have a music server with 775GB of music (in FLAC) on it that died (and not a good backup). Glad I still have the 2500 CDs
Click to expand...

Backups would, of course, be needed. Or a lot of new ripping.

Streaming stuff, I do not like because I don't want a subscription for everything and I am not always connected to the Internet despite popular belief.
 
That's me. Don't count on a connection. They disappear with a likelihood that's directly proportional to the importance that you have it.
 
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