The company aims to offer an alternative to the cheaper bows that are often used in schools. These typically have the hair glued in, meaning the hair cannot be replaced. Students can purchase a more expensive bow, but then the rehairing process must be carried out by a trained luthier.

You can see how the bow works in the video below:

Even if the student is too young or doesn't feel able to carry out this process, it can be done swiftly by their teacher, eliminating the cost and effort of a trip to the luthier.

This system is also more sustainable than using cheap bows that have to be replaced regularly, helping slow the deforestation of Pernambuco and other precious woods.

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Divi:de bows function like normal carbon bows. However, there is a small silver ring on the stick, and when this is unscrewed, the stick can be divided into two pieces. The frog can then be detached from the lower of the two pieces.

At present, the company offers five different models of violin bows, and cello and double bass bows are available on request.

The Violin Channel is currently giving away a Divi:de bow until Thursday, January 29!

"We felt the need to create the divi:de bow and the divi:de flight case, because we saw a very real problem that almost every traveling string player faces: our bows don’t fit into cabin-size luggage, and airlines are becoming stricter every year," Haffner told The Violin Channel. "As musicians, we are asked to be flexible, innovative, and mobile, yet our most essential tools were still designed for a world that didn’t include modern travel restrictions."

"The divi:de bow was born from the desire to give musicians freedom: freedom from stress at the airport, freedom from damaging or checking valuable bows, and freedom to travel light without compromising sound, balance, or playability," Haffner added. "We wanted to create a bow that respects the traditions of our craft, but embraces the realities of our lives today. So the motivation was simple: to solve a problem I personally experienced hundreds of times, and to offer a reliable, elegant, and beautifully engineered solution for musicians everywhere."

“The divi:de bow combines for me the long-awaited and desired seemingly impossible solution of the ‘too long and too heavy violin case’ problem and a great musical instrument,” said VC Artist Sergey Malov. “The response, playability, and weight distribution are excellent. The look is amazing. A visionary concept and masterful finishing. A must have!”

To find out more, visit Divi:de's website.

 

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The post These Travel-Friendly Bows by "Divi:de" Can Be Disassembled appeared first on World's Leading Classical Music Platform.

Prior to this study, comparable investigations into muscle movement required the use of electrodes on the skin. This technique could only measure gross motor movements with large muscles, and also, the variation in anatomy between individuals made it difficult to draw generalized conclusions from these datasets.

The researchers built a deep-learning framework for the task and trained it on a comprehensive dataset using recordings of professional pianists. The new system will offer a low-cost, non-invasive method for analyzing fine motor control,  which will help to optimize rehabilitation strategies, enhance performance training, and inform future developments in human-machine interaction.

Titled PianoKPM, the dataset captures how professional pianists move, press, and control their hands with precision. It includes 12.6 hours of synchronized data from 20 pianists performing seven distinct musical tasks. Each performance was recorded with multi-view videos at 60 frames per second, 3D hand poses, 1 kHz keystroke data, audio, and 2 kHz EMG signals from six small hand muscles. The dataset contains more than five million pose frames and 28 million EMG samples, creating the first detailed map linking visible motion with internal muscle activity.

"Leveraging this dataset, we propose PianoKPM Net to infer high-frequency EMG from pose data," said Professor Hideki Koike, who led the study.

"Together, the PianoKPM Net and PianoKPM dataset create a foundation for affordable access to internal physiological and muscle activity signals, supporting progress in human augmentation and advanced human–machine interaction."

The post Japanese Study Finds that AI can Track Pianists' Muscle Activity from Video Alone appeared first on World's Leading Classical Music Platform.

Musicians Alfred Goodrich, Mike Block, and Elijah Lee recently appeared on an episode of Shark Tank, with the goal of garnering an investment in their instrument-making company Forte3D. The company designs, engineers, and hand-assembles bowed string instruments made with cutting-edge 3D printing technology, utilizing carbon fiber and polymer materials.

Despite the bodies of the instruments being 3D-printed, there is still a great deal of craft involved in the instrument-making process. The company finishes each instrument with wooden components — including the bridges, sound posts, fingerboards, tailpieces, tuning pegs, and endpins. All of the designs are fully patented.

The company's aim is to make high-quality instruments available at a much lower price point than those that are made by hand. Forte3D's cellos, for instance, cost just $3000 — and the company's violins, which have just recently launched, cost $1800.

Following their pitch on Shark Tank, the trio successfully secured an investment of $250,000 in exchange for 16% equity from Shark Lori Greiner.

"We need more innovations like this, creative solutions that expand access to music-making and open new paths to imagination and expression," said cellist Yo-Yo Ma of the instruments.

You can hear cellist Mike Block playing and discussing the instruments below. In addition, you can learn more about the instruments on Forte3D's website.

Image credit: Shark Tank 

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Focused on the performing arts, Tonic is a free online and community-based learning tool, created and led by VC Artist Ray Chen. Over the last two years, Ray has worked on providing a space for musicians internationally to learn and perform music together. 

The platform is suited for all musicians from beginners to professionals. Within its "Studios," you can get real-time feedback from fellow musicians during your practice session. Users can also set practice reminders to help keep track of their progress, create an avatar, join various interest groups, and chat with others between practice sessions. 

“I know from personal experience that practice can be a lonely and frustrating journey, especially when you feel like you're not making progress,” Ray told The Violin Channel. “That's why I wanted to create a space where musicians can share their work in progress, get feedback, and support each other, regardless of their age, skill, or background,” he added. “At Tonic, we celebrate every step of your journey, from the first awkward notes all the way to the polished performances. 

“One of the biggest benefits of using Tonic is the opportunity to connect with other musicians from around the world,” Ray continued. “With our live practice rooms, users can learn from each other and form lasting friendships that extend beyond the platform. Plus, with cute customizable avatars, and exciting events like Challenges, practice becomes a fun and rewarding experience that users can look forward to every day.”

Additionally, Tonic hosts scheduled live feedback sessions with members of its faculty including Ray himself, violinists Stefan Jackiw, Noah Bendix-Balgley, Robert Lipsett, Roberto González-Monjas, and the Dover Quartet’s Bryan Lee, Joel Link, and cellist Camden Shaw. 

More mentors include violist Amihai Grosz, bassist Derek Zadinsky, cellists Stephan Koncz and VC Artist Pablo Ferrández, pianists Robert McDonald and Joyce Yang, flutist Jasmine Choi, clarinetist Andreas Ottensamer, French horn player Stefan Dohr, bassoonist William Short, and classical guitarist MILOŠ.

To download the app, click here, or visit the app store on a preferred device. 

Tonic App

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The Solo App, a new platform for high-quality online music lessons, was created to solve this issue. The Violin Channel had a chance to discuss the inspiration behind the project and its unique features with creator Grigory Kalinovsky.

Grigory Kalinovsky Talks Us Through the SoloApp

Backstory:

I have been involved with online music lessons since 1993. My teacher, Pinchas Zukerman, was actively advocating for the development of the technology necessary for conducting live online music lessons with sound quality high enough for classical music students. In fact, I was the first “guinea pig” to ever have an online lesson – playing scales for Mr. Zukerman from a Polycom studio in Westchester, NY, during one of the first tests of the emerging technology.

In subsequent years, I had regular remote lessons with Mr. Zukerman while studying with him and Patinka Kopec at the Manhattan School of Music, and once I graduated and joined the faculty at MSM, I also gave frequent masterclasses over the system. Upon my move to Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 2013, besides successfully advocating for the development of our own high-tech remote studio, which is now in high demand by our faculty, I also started exploring different desktop options to be able to reach students in different parts of the world — without relying on expensive stand-alone equipment and specialized studios. As I explored different solutions available at the time, one thing became clear to me – the main reason most existing platforms are poorly suited for classical music lessons is that they are all built around the idea of instantaneous communication to maximize the feeling of being in the same room with the other meeting members. In other words, they prioritize the immediacy of communication over stability and quality of sound. Gradually, certain ideas crystalized in my head about what techniques successful online teaching platforms should employ to maximize sound transmission quality, but in pre-pandemic times I had a hard time finding anyone interested in pursuing the idea with me.

During my live masterclass visits to my native Saint-Petersburg, Russia, I met Viacheslav Zilberbord, a concert producer and entrepreneur, and the founding director of the Music Education Support Foundation. During these masterclasses, I started working with his teenage daughter Anna – a very talented young violinist – and our relationship quickly progressed from infrequent meetings during my masterclass trips to regular online lessons.

When the pandemic hit, and the classical music world was suddenly forced to move most educational activities online with existing technologies sourly lacking in sound quality especially, I shared my ideas for the improvement of online lesson experience with Mr. Zilberbord. He consulted with some IT specialists who confirmed that these ideas had merit, and with his business connections and enthusiasm for classical music education, Mr. Zilberbord was able to put together a working group, headed by Alexander Grishchenkov, dedicated to developing the Solo App which after months of testing and tweaking we are now presenting to our colleagues around the world.

Unique Features

From the moment I started testing different desktop platforms for online violin lessons, I had a burning question – “why shouldn’t it be possible to get at least the same sound quality during an online lesson as one gets live-streaming their performance on a smartphone?” The two main reasons, I realized, were audio processing done during live video-conferencing calls (namely echo and noise cancelation, both of which are great for speech, but severely degrade the quality of music audio) and prioritizing immediacy of communication experience over the consistently sustained quality of audio signal. 

Therefore, in our Solo App we created two main communication modes:

1. “Interactive,” which works much like any other video-conferencing app, except that it still prioritizes audio signal over video, so that if the internet connection starts degrading, the app sacrifices video quality before allowing the audio signal to degrade. The app also never allows the speed of the sound to change the way it happens with other platforms, when the sound starts “chasing” the video.

2. “Solo” – whereby clicking “Listen” or “Play” buttons (also activated through arrow keys on a keyboard) mutes the “listening” side, turns off echo cancellation entirely, and activates deliberate minimal latency (or “buffering”) to allow the transmitted signal to maintain highest possible quality when the connection speed is not optimal. There is also a “Turbo” mode, which increases latency to a couple of seconds and can be turned on when the connection is more unstable.

The app also has a recording function on either the teacher’s or the student’s computer to record the lessons (the teacher can block recording), and lesson “rooms” created by the teacher to which the students can be invited to connect. At the moment, the app allows only one-to-one connection, but we plan to add multi-user connections in future releases to allow for a public masterclass lesson format.

I have been using the app extensively for several months now, and I am really impressed and proud of how well it has been working, how much it has improved the lesson experience for me and my students, and how much more confident I feel that I am catching the nuances I need to hear in the students’ playing to help them grow to the best of my ability. Recently, because of inclement weather, I was forced to move some of my university lessons online for a day without the students having time to prepare with external microphones and ethernet cable connections (things I normally insist on for online lessons to maximize sound quality). To my immense satisfaction, I realized that my original goal behind the app’s development has been realized – even with internal microphones and spotty Wi-Fi connection from dorm rooms (things that in my experience would normally lead to a nearly useless lesson), the Solo App made the violin sound come through clearly, without the expected usual distortions in the upper register or “wateriness” in the lower one, and even when the connection speed dropped so low that certain distortions were unavoidable, it was very clear which ones were coming from the playing itself and which were the connection artifacts.

At the moment, Solo App is in a public beta stage – users can sign up for free and download either Mac or PC versions from the website (www.playsolo.app). We would like as many of our colleagues around the world as possible to start using it for their online teaching, testing its features, and providing feedback. We look forward to hearing from them!

-Grigory Kalinovsky

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