subject: Silent Electric Violin [print this page] Learning to play electric violin shares many similarities with finding out acoustic violin, with a few important differences. The first is that just about every acoustic violin is formed and tuned the same way. Electric violins, however, can come in many shapes and varieties, including 4-string, 5-string, 7-string, fretted, and a few with the higher bout removed completely to allow simpler playing in the larger positions. And, the truth is, your acoustic violin can be converted into an electrical by attaching both a microphone or a piezo pickup to the body. Most other electric violins use a solid body, identical to most electric guitars (similar to the ever-present fender stratocaster). What follows is a review of electric violins and a dialogue of a number of the further gear youll seemingly require. While there are many electrical violins in the marketplace by giant quantity producers, most of those just dont sound very good. Some of the better (and mostly handmade) electrical violins are reviewed below. I made my choice from instruments that Ive either played or owned. In common, Im not a fan of mass produced instruments. But Yamaha makes a number of the best. A part of the Yamaha silent collection, the model SV-200 contains a dual piezo pickup. That is supposed to improve the sensitivity of the instrument to the subtleties of your taking part in, particularly dynamic (quantity) range. Coming in at round $1000, this instrument is cheaper than the others Ill review below. On taking part in the instrument, I believed it was indeed responsive, actually more so than earlier Yamaha instruments. The on-board pre-amp permits for some sound manipulation on the instrument itself moderately than in a separate, indifferent unit. The down-aspect of that is that it increases the burden of the violin. For electric violins using a pickup, a pre-amp is critical to accentuate the sign out of your violin, and to permit you to EQ the sound. One common instance of a pre-amp is the L.R. Baggs Para Acoustic DI. Some electric violins also have on-board pre-amps. Further sound manipulation and signal intensification occurs when the signal is passed via an amplifier. As a result of most amps work best with mid and low frequency tones, it may be troublesome to find a good amp for the electric violin manufacturer, and even then it is normally essential to spend so much of time taking part in with the EQ. A preferred amplifier for electrical violin is the Fishman Loudbox 100. An important consideration when selecting an amplifier is that every leaves its personal imprint in your sound. Thus, trying earlier than shopping for is especially important with amps. For a more true copy of your sound, a PA system with audio system may also be used. The sound can still be EQd with a personal PA system and its attainable to preserve the acoustic sound. Finally, the sign, after passing via the completely different sound manipulation devices, is broadcast to our ears by speakers. Often, these are built into the amp. You too can add extra audio system to create a stereo effect. If you need to kind of duplicate your acoustic sound, enjoying electrical violin may not be very satisfying to you. However for collaborating in a band, it allows the participant to regulate their quantity to match the other instruments, and to alter the sound to slot in better with a rock or pop type of music. That being mentioned, electrical violin normally requires a doubtlessly moderately expensive foray into digital tools, which may be quite a lot of enjoyable but also tough for the reason that sound you might be searching for might take quite a lot of time to find, and may require testing quite a lot of completely different gear. Discovering your sound could be a long journey. Some of the more attention-grabbing things you are able to do is to play on a 5-string, which adds a c string, under your g-string, or employ an octave pedal, which can drop your pitch an entire octave. Or you can play with distortion or a wah-wah pedal. And, while excellent technique is vital for classical music, electric violin manufacturer may be more forgiving. In the tip, going electric can enable the violinist to participate in groups where abnormal acoustic violin simply cannot match the volume of the other instruments. In addition, the almost countless ability to control the sound permits the electric violinist to go where no acoustic player has gone before.
