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Unexplainable
What's good sound?
00:26:29
Every hand-crafted instrument from violin maker Michael Doran holds its own unexplainable questions.
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- [00:01]
A
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B
This is a Monday.com ad the same Monday.com designed for every team. The same Monday.com with built in AI scaling your work from day one the same Monday.com with an easy and intuitive setup. Go to Monday.com and try it for free. This is Unexplainable I'm Meredith Hodnot. We love hearing from listeners. We read every email you send and we especially love hearing from listeners that have really cool jobs. Could you read the email that you sent in?
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C
Sure, yeah. Let me just pull it up. Hello Unexplainable I'm a violin maker and I really enjoyed your recent episode on A440 and the Journey that it's been to get there.
- [01:54]
B
Michael Doran makes violins and cellos in Seattle, and he wrote in to share his perspective on our episode last September called what's a All about the Musical Note A and the Long and Windy Road to Standardize it around the world at 440Hz, instrument makers were on the front lines of that international coordination, and even today Michael wrote in to us to say that he still thinks about different tunings in his work.
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C
One of the interesting aspects that comes up in my work is that some symphonies, notably San Francisco and Boston, are tuning to a sharper A. Then sometimes the soloist will turn, you know, 1 hertz sharper to get a little extra power and projection over the orchestra. I made a cello for the principal of the BSO and I had to make sure it sounded good at a 444 or even 445. He wanted higher tension strings as well, so all that adds up to more stress on the instrument. But but it really is amazing just how a tiny bit sharper can give a lot more projection and brilliance and it's an interesting puzzle for makers. Lastly, I do my best to Protect my hearing. But I do have occasional short term tinnitus where things will go quiet and I'll hear a pure tone in one ear for a few moments. And the one in my right ear is a perfect A440. And the left ear is slightly sharp, maybe more like a 442. Cheers.
- [03:19]
B
Michael Doran, thank you so much for reading that.
- [03:23]
C
You're welcome. And I did fact check myself and I called the principal of the Boston Symphony and I was like, do you guys really tune to 444? And he was like, no, we tuned to 441. And I was like, do you ever tune, like when you're soloing, do you tune to 1Hz higher and to get an edge? And he's like, I don't need an edge. So that's wrong. I did think about it when I made the cello. That's true. But it's not true that they actually tuned to 444. I read that Berlin Symphony turns to 442, but that's the sharpest I could find. So 441 is pretty standard.
- [04:03]
B
Got it. But the 444 is, like pushing it.
- [04:06]
C
Super pushing it. Yeah. Although I did have one of my local violinists come in. I actually had their, like, best buddies. They often come in together, Andrew and Max. And Andrew is like a 440 purist. He loves the 440 and he thinks you should just play at 440. And then Max is a 443 guy and he calls it a happy a like, like you tune just. Just a little bit more. And he loves that. A 443. And it was so fascinating to have both their violins in the shop at the same time. And one was tuned to 440 and one was tuned to 443. And just the, like, tiny difference in the sound. Max's violin just sounded so much more like direct and focused and kind of like edgy. It almost made me, like, just a little bit uncomfortable to listen to. And then the 440, you play it and you're just like, oh, it's just kind of size. You can kind of sink into that. A 440. So it's just very interesting how these teeny changes make such a difference.
- [05:07]
B
Yeah, I feel like it's so subtle, it's almost subliminal.
- [05:11]
C
Yeah, it's just interesting because they're such different players too. Andrew has sort of a more delicate touch, a lighter touch with the bow. Not that he can't play forcefully, but that's Just not his default. And I feel like Max just almost. He attacks the violin with his bow. And he can play softly, too, but just in general, he likes sort of a heavier bow hand and more movement. And then Max just got these super duper fancy, literal gold strings. They just came out and they're, like, super expensive, and they're wrapped in actual gold and whatever fun. But gold is heavy and tends to give sort of a warmer sort of a sound. So he's got this, like, edgy playing style, but then he wants the slightly warmer strings. And, you know, maybe in the end, do they get to the same spot? Like, we've got a delicate player playing with edgy strings and an edgy player playing with warm strings. So, like, maybe we're getting to the same point in the end.
- [06:16]
B
When you hear these notes, what are the different ways that you're interpreting the vibes of these different tunings?
- [06:24]
C
Yeah, right. It's totally like a vibes thing. It almost feels like a presence in the notes, something around the edges. Because it's still an A, right? It's close enough that you would call it an A, but it's just a little bit juiced a little bit, Almost like anxious, something like that. And the 440 feels sort of like a little more spread out, a little more relaxed. It breathes a little more. I wonder what. I don't know. I've never. I never hear a 439. So, like, I wonder if that's even more relaxed.
- [07:04]
B
It's interesting, too, because, like, when you're talking about these numbers, right, the 440, the 439, the 444, it's like, literally how much energy is going into that note.
- [07:17]
C
Yeah, totally. So 440 is 440 cycles per second. So, like, literally, the wave that is traveling through the air is literally oscillating back and forth 440 times a second. And so there's a way in which it has a sharper energy because it's literally sharper when it's moving through the air because those little waves are smaller as they get to your ear.
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B
Right.
- [07:52]
C
And then, I mean, you know, on top of all this, like, there's the pure tone, the A440. Right. Violins are so neat because they play all of these notes around the primary note. We don't always want everything to be as. As efficient as possible because then it sort of turns into, you know, this pure sine wave kind of a thing. Right. Like, I don't actually want to all of the Energy to go into making that pure tone. I need some of it to go into the overtones and the notes, around the note. And that's where you think about, like, tone colors. Like, that's how violinists talk about, like, you know, a sweet tone or a piercing tone. And you should be able, with the same instrument, to mold the sound to do both those things, depending on what passage you're playing and what the player wants. Like, sometimes you need a great, you know, emphasis staccato and maximum fortissimo.
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B
Right.
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C
And then sometimes you need the instrument to just sort of, like, speak with, like, minimal bow pressure and just lightness. And that's part of what makes violin sound so complex and interesting. It's actually quite close to the sound of the human voice. We make all kinds of overtones and things. That's why each singer's voice is distinct and different. And you can, you know, easily tell the difference between my voice and your voice or Beyonce's voice or whomever.
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B
Speak yourself. I sound exactly like Beyonce.
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C
Well, I wasn't gonna say it, but, you know, it's uncanny. It's amazing. It's the same way with violins. And so all of those little overtones are changed when you change the primary frequency. So I think a lot about, you know, when I'm doing adjusting, like, there's high notes, high upper partials to the note in the, like, 18,000 hertz, 20,000 hertz, like, just on the edge of what humans can hear. And that can also influence presence. So I feel like when you're. When you're tuning higher, maybe it changes some of those partials and things that just kind of influence how you. How you feel about the sound.
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B
Right, right. That makes a lot of sense. I. I come from a cooking background, so, like, the analogy that's coming to mind is, like, you can use vanilla extract, where it's just the pure vanillin, which is the chemical that tastes like vanilla. Or you could get this tropical orchid pod that came from Madagascar and got fermented and dried in the sun and has all these other overtone chemicals that round out the taste and make it something much beyond that one primary note.
- [10:36]
C
Oh, absolutely. That is a. That's a great metaphor because, you know, you get this. You get this beautiful sort of combination of all of the different vibrations that are vibrating with the room and the air and the bow and the violinist and everything that gets to your ear. It's incredibly complex. Yeah, I mean, like, vibration violins are. Are one of the most complex vibrating machines that humans have. Ever made. I feel like after 400 years, we're, like, just now starting to get an understanding of how these things actually work, how they. How they radiate sound, how they vibrate at different frequencies. I mean, it's. It's astoundingly complex, which is what keeps it interesting for me as a maker. Right. There's. There's a mountaintop in the distance, but you can never quite reach it because, you know, every piece of wood and every player is different, and every interpretation of sound is different. So you have this wonderful range of what is a good sound. And, I mean, that's what we're talking about here with a 440.
- [11:36]
B
Yeah. As a violin maker, do you have any unexplainables, any unanswered questions that remain a mystery in the world of. Of instrument making?
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C
Oh, my goodness. I mean, like. Like, so many.
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B
So many nothing but questions.
- [11:57]
C
Like, I mean, that's kind of my job, right? The real problem with the experiment of violin making from, like, a scientific point of view is that there are so many variables. You change one thing, and it changes five others.
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B
Okay.
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C
It's so hard to get, like, an actual control on the things that you're trying to test. And you can never have the same piece of wood twice. So every piece of wood, even if it's from the same tree, is a little bit different. And so my job as a maker is. Is to take the materials that I have and what I want to make the sound that I'm going for and somehow find the narrow path in between those two things to get to it. But, like. Like, we're. We're just nailing down some of those basic questions, like, what is nice sound? And, like, how do you feel about it? And, you know, what are we even going for here? And so in my job, it's like, if I do this, what happens?
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B
Right.
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C
I think of it more, like, in my job, I'm like. I, like, can push the sound sort of one way or I can push the sound another way. And with every choice, I'm sort of guessing that it's gonna do a little bit more towards this side of things. A little bit more towards that side of things.
- [13:08]
B
Yeah.
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C
Like, there's this dowel, a post. In Italian, the word for sound. Post means, like, soul of the instrument. Because it's so important. This skinny little dowel, exactly where that post is to the tenth of a millimeter is so important for the sound. It's not glued in or anything. It's just fit perfectly. Tap the sound Post back, you know, a tenth of a millimeter. Does that change the sound? Do we like what's going on? You know, does it emphasize the G string more, the A string more, and tap, tap, tap. It's like playing the game operation. And then, oh, maybe we need a post that's 2/10 of a millimeter longer. Let's try that.
- [13:51]
B
What are some of the choices that you have to make, like, right at the outset, as you're envisioning the future sound?
- [13:58]
C
Sort of. Generally, I try and think about making something sort of, like, brighter and more powerful and projecting versus sort of warmer and, like, more chocolatey and perhaps a little bit more intimate. And that's sort of the broad palette that I think about. Right. And how do we balance the two? How do we get both? Ideally, getting both of those things is like. That's like the mountain.
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B
Yeah.
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C
You know, something that is so sweet and rich and gorgeous. But then you can also. It's very loud, and you can hear it at the. At the edge of the hall when you want it to be loud. And, you know, that's sort of like the. That's the mountaintop that we're going for, Right?
- [14:41]
B
Yeah. Is there a Doran violin or a Dorancello sound?
- [14:47]
C
Well, I mean, probably. I mean, I like to think of my instruments as siblings, not twins. Right. Like, no two are exactly the same. But I was at a violin making competition. They judge the instruments for, like, three or four days. And during that time, nobody can interact with the judges or see the instruments because it's all done, you know, blinded. So it's a lot of waiting around and being slightly anxious in a hotel room. And at the end of the competition, they open up this enormous ballroom where all the instruments are. And there were about 500 instruments in there, you know, 200 violins and 100 cellos and 100 violas. And so players come in, makers come in, and they can. You can look at all the instruments, and you can play them if you want. So it's just cacophonous sound. People playing a hundred different pieces in, you know, all the corners of the room. But several times I would be talking to somebody, and my back would be turned to the cello section, and I would hear a cello, and I would say, oh, that's my cello. I can tell that's my cello. And I'd look around, and somebody would have been playing my cellos. So can I recognize my instruments? I think maybe. I mean, you know, we'd have to do an actual study to check that out. But at least in those instances I did and I was able to pick it out.
- [16:11]
B
Wow. Wow, that's so cool. I was wondering, could you take me on a little tour of your studio if you're nearby?
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C
Oh, sure. Yeah. Oh, that would be. I would love to. Can I warn you that it's a mess?
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B
No worries. No worries.
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C
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B
That's up front.
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C
Okay, so let's see. Here is the studio. It's a one car garage that we turned into. Turned into my studio. But you know, there's this smell to the shop. It's kind of a mixture of like wood and varnish and possibility and you know, the machines and the music and it all just kind of like rolls together. People who come into the shop are often like, oh, I love that smell. That's the smell of the workshop. And. And yeah, I love that. That's one of the things I love about the job.
- [18:38]
B
And I mean you're like starting off with wood that I'd recognize in a fireplace. It looks like a chunk of wood. It doesn't look like a two by four at Lowe's.
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C
Yeah, totally. That's how the wood comes to me. It often comes in these wedges and then I take away everything that isn't a violin a la Michelangelo. If it's a big tree, big spruce tree could make a couple hundred violin tops easily. Like, I thought about this, you know, in my lifetime, I would be very lucky If I made 400 instruments. You know, maybe less. 500 would be pushing it. I mean, there's no way. And so, like, the output, my output of my whole life, my whole career as being a professional violin maker could potentially be covered by, like, one tree. If you had the entire tree, you could make. You could make all the instruments from your career.
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B
A lifetime's worth of instruments. Yeah.
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C
So I don't often get to buy the entire tree.
- [19:43]
B
Yeah.
- [19:47]
C
Let's see. I have over here all of my old vintage power tools. I bought. All the power tools in my shop are restored antiques that I like to take apart and fix and tinker with.
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B
What's your favorite tool of the moment?
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C
Oh, favorite tool. Oh, man.
- [20:11]
B
I know. Choosing between your children.
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C
Favorite tool. Favorite tool. Okay, okay, I got it. Yeah, yeah. So hold on. I gotta. I gotta move some stuff out of the way. So let's see. Let's put this there. So we have here my. It's. It's. It's one of my favorite tools. And it's also a very iconic violin maker tool. It's called a finger plane. And so a plane holds a blade at a specific angle, and you push it, and it shaves the wood a little bit, right? And so there's big bench planes that make things flat that you use with two hands. And then as they get smaller and smaller and smaller, you start to call them palm planes or block planes, right? And then they get even smaller, and they call thumb planes, right? And then you get even smaller, and they're called finger planes. And they're like the iconic violin maker tool. So I have large finger planes like this.
- [21:23]
B
So it almost looks like a little shoe that, like, you put your finger in there, and then you can, like, push to shave just a little bit off.
- [21:29]
C
Yeah, exactly. And the neat thing about these sort of little shoes, they fit your hand very well. And the soles of these are very, very slightly rounded. So I can carve into an instrument and. And make that sort of hollow, right. Because the outside is a convex curve and the inside is a concave curve. Right. So I can. I can thickness that very precisely. And so these are the. These are the big ones. It's. I guess it's about two inches. Two inches long, something like that, with a three quarter inch wide Blade. And then I have the little. The little teeny, teeny, teeny ones that are about an inch long and maybe a quarter inch, quarter inch wide. For. This is mostly for violins. For, you know, a little. You get right there in. By the. By the channel or something like that.
- [22:13]
B
Yeah, you went from, like, small child shoe size to, like, doll shoe size.
- [22:18]
C
Doll shoe size, exactly. But I have all different sizes. I have about 20 of these. And the neat thing about these is that I made them, so they're a very, like, personal thing to me. They're like, a part of my making that I'm the only one who has this exact set of tools. And the shape that I carve with these tools is kind of endemic to these tools and my hands and how they work. And, you know, I've adjusted the soles a little bit over the years, so it's like this plane is shaped so that it cuts the shape that I want with my hands. It's a very, like, personal. Personal part of the. Of the work is. Is how you get that. How you get that line, letting the tool do the work.
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B
Right, right, right. But then almost it's like your fingerprint on it, because you know exactly what those tools are, and they're unique to you.
- [23:11]
C
Someday, you know, probably my son will use it and he'll make his own. His own fingerprints on it. Someday, yeah.
- [23:22]
B
And how much time do you spend in your. In your studio, here in the shop?
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C
Oh, my goodness, all of it. I mean, like, every moment I can, basically.
- [23:33]
B
Yeah.
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C
When. When I'm not hanging out with my son or my family, like, you know, this is what I love to do. Like, if tomorrow I got all the money in the world and I didn't have to work anymore, I would still show up to work here every day. Absolutely. Because this is what I love to do. It's. I can't imagine doing anything else. That's why. That's why I'm here to, you know, climb the mountain a little.
- [24:11]
B
What you're hearing right now is a Michael Dorincello played by Minzo Kim. If you want to learn more about a 440 and the road it took to get there, please listen to our great, great episode, what's A? By Emily Signer. And when you listen to it or any other of our episodes, we want to hear from you. Like I said, just always. But especially if you have a cool job out there that has something to do with an unexplainable episode, let us know. We're@ unexplainableox.com this episode was produced by me, Meredith Hoddinott. We had editing from Joanna Solotarov with help from Sally Helm, mixing and sound design from Erica Wong, and music from Erika and Iliane Menzel. Melissa Hirsch checked the Facts, Julia Longoria and Jorge Just are our editorial directors. Christian Ayala and Amy Padula are the sharpest days around. And as always, thank you to Brian Resnik for co creating the show with Noam Hassenfeld and Bird Pinkerton. If you'd like to support this show and the journalism that Vox does, we would love it if you'd become a member. It's easy to do. Just go to Vox.com members and you'll get access to all of Vox's journalism. If you sign up because you love Unexplainable, let us know. We again love to hear from you. Thank you so much. If you love the show but you can't join our membership, that's totally fine. Please leave us a nice review on your favorite place to listen to podcasts. It really helps other people find the show. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network and we will be back in your feed really soon with another episode about everything we just don't quite know yet.
- [26:24]
D
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