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Time:

Wednesday
December, 18, 2019
04:30 PM - 05:30 PM

Location:

Meeting Room W186

Clinician(s)

Fan-Chia Tao

Fan-Chia Tao

Practical Violin Acoustics for String Players: What Every String Player Should Know About Their Instrument, Bow and Strings

Clinic Synopsis:

Get answers to the most common questions about how a bowed instrument works from a leading expert on violin acoustics. A better understanding of how your instrument, bow and string works can be helpful not only in choosing and maintaining your instrument, but in improving your playing technique. Get answers to questions about the bridge, soundpost, wolf notes, whistling violin-E strings, and rosin.

Fan-Chia Tao - Biographical Information

Fan-Chia Tao is Director of Research & Development at D’Addario & Company, where he develops violin-family and guitar strings. He is active in the violin acoustics world, organizing meetings, workshops and research projects. He and violin maker Joseph Curtin, a MacArthur Fellowship ("genius grant") winner, co-founded and co-direct the influential Violin Society of America-Oberlin Acoustics Workshop, which has brought together the world’s leading violin makers and violin acoustics researchers for the past 17 summers. He has collaborated with Curtin and others on numerous research projects, including the Indianapolis and Paris Old versus New Violin blind experiments, whose results were published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences. He is a frequent guest speaker on violin acoustics. As an accomplished violinist and violist and avid chamber music player, he also has a passionate interest in practical violin acoustics for the string player. He has presented dozens of talks to musicians, teachers and students at schools, colleges, music conservatories, workshops and music educator conventions. He loves to explain in easy to understand terms the physics and acoustics of how the violin and the bowed string works. He has published articles in The Strad and Strings Magazine. Tao holds electrical engineering degrees from Caltech and Princeton University. He has just completed a term as President of the Violin Society of America, the largest organization of violin makers and enthusiasts in the world.

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