By Dan Trueman]

6756.trueman 8/23/06 12:04 PM Page 116 MY VIOLIN, MY LAPTOP, MY SELF [ by dan trueman] Every musical instrument—from the Stone Age flute to the laptop computer— is a piece of technology that simultaneously drives and limits the creative process. When I was four or five years old, I used to rest my with the keyboard, a love and a need which violin on my bed and gaze at it with a mixture of awe may be connected with a love of music but and lust. (I also wore every new pair of sneakers to are not by any means totally coincident bed the first night I had them—and sometimes the with it. This inexplicable and almost second night as well.). fetishistic need for the physical contact My need to bed down with brand-new footwear with the combination of metal, wood, and has long passed, of course; but I am still capable of ivory...that make up the dinosaur that the falling in love with an instrument. A photo of a nearly concert piano has become is, indeed, finished electric violin—sent to me by its maker to conveyed to the audience and becomes keep me abreast of its progress—is currently the necessarily part of the music....” [“On screen saver on my laptop. I stare at this image often, Playing the Piano,” The New York Review of imagining how the finished instrument will feel Books, October 21, 1999] under the chin. In a similar musing about the piano, ViolinCharles Rosen writes: Musical compositions particularize this fetish. To imagine playing the opening of the Bach Chaconne, Pianists do not devote their lives to their for instance, or Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” instrument simply because they like music: inspires a particular kind of physical response—we that would not be enough to justify a drea- can feel the way the instrument would sit in our ry existence of stuffy airplanes, uncomfort- hands, how our fingers, deriving energy from the able hotel rooms, and the hours trying to shoulders and spine, would drive the strings. Turn get the local piano technician to adjust the it around, and this sense of physicality becomes a soft pedal. There has to be a genuine love compositional motivator; we imagine a particular simply of the mechanics and difficulties of kind of physical engagement and discover the music playing, a physical need for the contact and instrument combination that will inspire it. Opposite: The author, plugged in 117 6756.trueman 8/23/06 12:04 PM Page 118 We tend to forget that the beautiful traditional I learned that Norway’s Hardanger fiddle (or hard- stop. Eventually, he staggers off into the woods, still lin is that one has no illusions about its “complete- instruments we play were once—like the electric ingfele) has been around about as long as the fiddling, and is never heard from again; hence, the ness”; this is definitely a work in progress, and it violin—works in progress: unrefined, provisional. In “conventional” violin has. It has a nearly flat bridge Devil’s tuning. invites us to imagine how it might be better. My early some ways they still are, or can be understood as such, and set of sympathetic strings that run underneath Much of my creative work for the past decade has work with it was in rock bands and jazz ensembles, if we set aside our reverence for a moment. And it’s the fingerboard and through the bridge. These been framed by my experiences with the Hardanger and I did what most electric violinists do—plugged easy to underestimate how much the design of these “understrings” are not bowed; they simply sing along, fiddle. It has informed my sense that musical instru- into an electric guitar amplifier or PA system and had instruments has determined the history of composi- providing a kind of built-in reverb unit that generates ments are more than vehicles for expression, that they a ball. As I returned to quieter, more intimate cham- tion, even the very essence of how tonal music works. a beautiful pentatonic glow. The neck is a bit shorter embody musical values that are specific and historical. ber music settings, plugging in became less and less Rosen takes this idea further: “the traditional and at a gentler angle than those on violins today, To this day, whenever I pick up a conventional violin, satisfying. In fact, I find it hard to imagine anything construction of the keyboard…has had a largely and the strings are thus under slightly less I feel Bach, Mendelssohn, less conducive to chamber tension. Virtually all the tradi- Schubert, even Stravinsky. Wired for a Princeton performance music as I know it (both tional music for hardingfele For me, it is almost an sonically and socially) And it’s easy to underestimate how much the design of these features constant double- equation: Violin = Mozart than a PA system. To stops (thanks to the flat (or Beethoven, etc.). The begin with, the PA system instruments has determined the history of composition, even bridge), detailed orna- music of these composers establishes a “plane of sep- mentation (facilitated has inhabited my body aration” between audience the very essence of how tonal music works. by the lighter, lower- through the violin. and performer, whereas tension strings), and a Exploring the hardingfele, one of the great joys of bowing style that is and the six-string electric making chamber music is smooth and continu- violin (my other main that it is not exclusively unrecognized influence on the history of harmony, ous (in part to keep the understrings instrument these days), was a performance-centric not completely benign,” in part because, for example, ringing without interruption). The tradi- an essential move that music; for many, it is “playing a melody in C-major feels very different tional style also features numerous scor- enabled me to find new simply about the activity under the hand from playing it in F-sharp major.” For datura; the most common tuning has the top music while still taking of making music with many composers, the relationship between our bodies three strings almost a whole step higher (more advantage of the physical friends. Even when work- and these instruments lies at the center of the com- or less) than “normal” and the lowest string training I had as a violinist. ing with a good electric positional process, even if we don’t acknowledge it. even higher, creating a fourth between the These instruments were guitar amp, it is difficult, I grew up playing chamber music with my family. bottom two strings. Other tunings are more just different enough that I if not impossible, to My parents built the harpsichord we used for playing exotic, most notably trollstilt, or troll tuning no longer felt bound by achieve a convincing trio sonatas. I learned how to tune it, of necessity. The (B, F#,B#,D#—from the low string up), the violin equation, but ensemble sound and not violin was something I took for granted as a kind of which is associated with a so-called Devil’s similar enough that I could feel as if the electronic found object, unimaginable as anything else. It wasn’t Repertoire. still, with some retraining, sound is really coming until my early 20s, when I was just starting to compose, In the Hardanger fiddle, I play them. from another world. that I began to look at my instrument differently, and couldn’t have encountered a Since then I have com- One of my most frus- with some suspicion. While I don’t know that I could more vivid demonstration of posed hardingfele music, mostly in folk-inspired, trating experiences working with the electric violin have articulated it at the time, I think I was aware that how technology influences, cre- chamber music settings. (My wife, a classical guitarist, came in transition from playing at home, alone, to whatever musical voice I was going develop would be ates—even demands—a particu- and I form a duo named Trollstilt). I have also spent playing in a small hall with a couple other musicians. deeply shaped by my relationship with the violin; in a lar musical style and expressivity. years working with the six-string electric violin, some- At home, I would sit and face the speaker, getting the very real and physical way, the instrument was (and Hardingfele music simply would times by itself, and other times in combination with a sound full on. In the hall, such an arrangement was at would continue to be) a powerful and idiosyncratic not exist without its instrument laptop. My first electric violin was a fretted six-string best antisocial, so I ended up sitting next to the speak- filter for my entire musical existence. (trying to play that music on a flying-V made by Mark Wood, but over the years—as er. This still wasn’t working for my fellow musicians I began to think again about my family’s harpsi- conventional violin is extraordi- I’ve returned to chamber music—I’ve moved toward and me; all the high frequencies vanished, and it chord, how it was put together, and what it was like narily difficult). In a myth associated designs with more of the sound and feel of acoustic sounded muddy—I began to play differently, going to tune. I started to see it not as a fixed and final enti- with trollstilt, an old drunken reveler instruments. I currently play a six-string instrument lightly on the low strings and desperately trying to get ty—but as a glorious piece of evolving technology, discovers a dusty fiddle underneath a by Eric Aceto that has a full resonating body and a some highs, to no avail.

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