The 2012 Guthman Musical Instrument Design Competition is sponsored by the Georgia Teach Center for Music Technology.

With his entry, an Electro-mechanically Augmented Acoustic Violin (EAAV) Don Rickert of Don Rickert Musical Instruments has been selected as a FINALIST in the "Augmented" category of the 2012 Guthman Musical Instrument Design Competition . The finals, involving actual live performance, will be Feb. 16-17.

Dr. Rickert's Electro-mechanically Augmented Acoustic Violin (EAAV) bridges the gaps between acoustic violins and electric as well as MIDI violins. The violin has a completely orginal "floating bridge" that sits on a "shelf" that is an extension of the fingerboard. This "floating bridge"-"shelf" arrangement, in which the bridge does not come into contact with the instrument soundboard, has been dubbed by Rickert as a "Cantilevered Fingerboard."

The entire neck, fingerboard and bridge assembly is as acoustically separate from the body as is practical. Multiple input transducers pick up as much as playing as possible. The inputs from the various transducers are put through a mixer, which is used to adjust the levels from the various tranducers. The output from the mixer is processed by a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) running on an iPod Touch. The output from the iPod goes to an on-board miniature stereo amplifier. The amplifier drives output transducers attached to two sound-plates composed of soft aluminum and a veneer of maple.
This instrument can be made to sound like an antique classical violin, a cello, and various electronic effects can be applied via the DAW. NO external amplifier is used and the instrument runs on batteries attached to the shoulder rest in Version 1 of the EAAV instrument. A photo series of EAAV version 1 is available on FaceBook.

“The Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition is a platform for bringing like-minded inventors and composers together from all over the world to develop their ideas and careers,” said Gil Weinberg, director of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology. “We encourage anyone with a great idea that pushes the envelope in musical expression to enter.”
 
An annual event to find the world’s best new ideas in musicality, design and engineering, Wired magazine has called the competition an “X-Prize for music,” and contestants have likened it to a TED Conference for new musical instrument designers.
 
This year, winners will be selected by an expert jury panel that will include Atau Tanaka, media artist and researcher, and Cyril Lance, chief engineer at electronic musical instrument manufacturer Moog Music.
 
In addition to Best in Show prize and Best Student Submission award, prizes will be given for entries in five categories. See examples from past competitions on the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology YouTube channel. The categories are:
 
Mobile:musical instruments that take advantage of the unique interface elements and extreme portability of either standard smartphone platforms or custom-made hardware devices to revolutionize how and where music is made. See an example from past competitions.
 
Robotics: mechanical devices that play an existing acoustic instrument or contain such an instrument within their design, facilitating the performance of novel music and/or creating novel collaborations with other musicians while they demonstrate the potential for musicianship in the robotic realm. See an example from past competitions.
 
Repurposed: musical instruments that are inspired by existing non-musical objects, building upon their design to show the latent musicality we regularly encounter but might not otherwise notice. See an example from past competitions.
 
Augmented: musical instruments inspired by existing acoustic instruments, building upon their existing design, playing technique and performance practice with new elements that extend their expressive capabilities. See an example from past competitions.
 
Controllers: novel hardware interfaces that can be readily connected to other software or hardware via a standard protocol, immediately expanding the expressive performance capabilities of anything with which they are linked. See an example from past competitions.

What is good about blogs is also a source of problems. Blogs like this enable a business like ours to dissmeninate whatever it is we want to disseminate VERY effectively. Every post is automatically re-posted and or syndicated through countless other channels. These "channels" include, in our case, FaceBook (2 accounts), MySpace (2 accounts), a large number of "RSS" (actually stands for "Really Simple Syndication"...really!), Google, LinkedIn, Twitter (2 accounts). All of these get "re-blogged" by numerous other people and organizations, many of which we have never heard of.

All of that attention is good...right? Well, sure, over the years we have become an inescapable presence in search engine (e.g. Google) results. No complaints about that. So what is the down side? There are two big problems:

ONE: Visits through the "back door"

An ever smaller proportion of visits to a blog (e.g. like this one) are from loyal followers and friends who visit the home page to find out the latest news. This is called "coming in through the front door." At the same time, an ever increasing number of visits are "through the back door" when a visitor goes directly to individual pages (posts) that show up in search engine result lists. We know from careful analysis of our visit statistics, that most of these visitors DO NOT visit the home page as we would like them to do...as web etiquette (at least the standards we follow) demands...I would not think of NOT visiting the home page of a site for which a Google search plopped me somewhere deep in its content hierarchy.

What "back door" visitors see is completely out of context. A back door visitor could easily get the impression that we still sell banjos or that our primary business is still selling musical instruments at unrealistically low prices via our online store, the Adventurous Muse Store. NOTE: While the Adventurous Muse Store still sells select used and vintage instruments, bows, cases and the like, our flagship store/galleries for ALL of our own instruments and accessories is now Don Rickert Musical Instruments.

TWO: "Content Rot" and its cousin, "Link Rot"

Much of our content is relatively time-independent. These are the articles that take us a long time to research and write. On the other hand, much content here and on most other blogs in the "webiverse" are ephemeral in intent. For instance, a post about our 2008 Labor Day Sale on one of our online stores is usually devoid of currently useful content...it is spoiled or "rotten" content. Yet, we get hundreds of visitors via search engines to trivial posts like expired store sale announcements. We even have people email or call about getting an item for that special 2008 sale price.

The "link rot" problem is more interesting. Many old posts have links that simply do not work. These are called "broken links." Nobody likes a broken link and they go away angry. A bigger issue for us are links that still work, but they lead (through the "back door" of the Adventurous Muse Store) to obsolete product listings. We have done the best we can to re-direct these visitors to the new Don Rickert Musical Instrument galleries.

Bottom Line:

No matter how you get to this site, do yourself a favor, and do us the courtesy, of visiting the Adventurous Muse home page.

While we are, in fact, associated with several commercial musical instrument ventures, the purpose of this site is informative, containing lots of background information and opinions. Of course, we don't mind if you decide to go to one our stores and buy something.

Our two online musical instrument stores are...

Don Rickert Musical Instruments: (www.RickertMusicalInstruments.com)

• Our primary galleries and initial discussion channel for prospective buyers of high-end custom and one-of-a-kind innovative musical instruments by Don Rickert Musical Instruments...visit us and be amazed!

The Adventurous Muse Store: (www.AdventurousMuseStore.com)

• Bows
• Realist(tm) electro-acoustic violins and pickups by David Gage
• Select used and vintage instruments
• Downloadable products (e.g. books, such as popular book on building cigar box fiddles)

~~~

• NOTE: Instruments and accessories by Don Rickert Lutherie or Don Rickert Design are no longer available at the Adventurous Muse Store...only available at the Don Rickert Musical Instruments site

Our parent company is Wiederholt & Rickert Partners, LLC, better known as Don Rickert Research and Design (DBA) and Don Rickert Design (DBA) (www.DonRickertDesign.com).

• A product design and design research firm transitioning to specialization in providing Expert Services to law firms and thier clients engaged in patent infrigment litigation, including, but not limited to musical instrument inventions...we ONLY work with the side in such litigation with the ethical high ground!

Initially, the world was not quite ready for what we had in mind, so we established an online retail operation called the Adventurous Muse Store (originally called the Fiddle & Bow Store). We got sucked into selling musical instruments and related accessories on a low price-driven basis driven by eBay, Amazon and various other "shopping comparison" sites. The market reality we faced forced us to sell instruments, including our own innovative designs, for FAR less than their actual value. We were subsisting in a true BUYER'S MARKET.

Our parent company, Wiederholt & Rickert Partners, LLC, was doing business in the same maringal profit world.

In the past year things have changed. It all started when Wiederholt & Rickert, LLC was discovered and was fortunate enought break into a difficult-to-enter "Providers Market" consulting niche. That is another story, but suffice it to say that our new-found niche does NOT involve competitive bidding, demontration projects, being "stiffed" (failure to pay) by clients and the like. The good fortune of Wiederholt & Rickert Partners, LLC has fundamentally changed the game for Don Rickert Musical Instruments, opening the opportunity to essentially get out of the online retail business and to concentrate on important reputation-building activities like inventing new musical instruments for international musical instrument design competitions (see the next post on the 2012 Guthman Musical Instrument Design Competitition).

We have opened a new online group of galleries (not a store in the strict sense) called D. Rickert Musical Instruments (www.RickertMusicalInstruments.com) as a conduit for doing business with prospective buyers of our high-end (nothing on the site is a "bargain"!) musical instrument creations on a design consulting basis. This means that all of our musical instruments will be priced on a true time and materials basis. Every instrument "build" is covered by a contract where deadlines, returns, "charge-backs" and the like are not legal options.

We can only do this because we currently DO NOT need the income, thus bringing back the satisfaction of inventing and making one-of-a-kind instruments. We have repeatedly hinted and outright stated here and in other forums that this is what we would do when we had sufficient funding. We sincerly hope that our bold action will help all of the other struggling musical instrument studios to once again thrive, dispelling the illusion of "the bargain" propegated by eBay and the price comparison sites.

Once we have cleaned up our own finacial "train wreck" (e.g. huge debt, etc.), we plan to be able to help other "boutique" firms with the money part.

What About the Adventurous Muse Store?

The Adventurous Muse Store is here to stay. We have moved all of our own instruments from the Adventurous Muse Storefront page and have effectively shut the "back door" where one can get to the undisplayed products via search engines such as Google. All of the hidden products now have a price of $0.00 and a prominent link to Don Rickert Musical Instruments.

The Adventurous Muse Store still plays an important role, as it is the place to purchase items NOT made by Don Rickert Musical Instruments, but which we are an Authorized Dealer. These items include:

• Conservatory and Master Bows by CodaBow, Glasser, Herber Wanka, Sebastian Dirr and Georg Werner
• The Realist(tm) 4 and 5-string electro-acoustic Violins and pickups by David Gage
• Select used and vintage instruments
• Downloadable products

OR

For $349, you can get a really nice fiddle with genuine hand-rubbed varnish, great strings and top-grade accessories, and a case to boot!

See the Standard Series Fiddles by Don Rickert Design at the Adventurous Muse Store.

The fiddle is a two-piece back Stradivarius pattern with a modern setup for advanced amateur or professional performance in just about any genre. We set the string height and the degree of bridge arch the way you want it, and string it with Helicore Medium Gauge (powerful and bright) or Thomastik-Infeld Vision Synthetic Core strings (powerful, full-bodied and dark).

The Fiddle

The select spruce top is graduated to Stradivari specs. The back, ribs and neck are dramatically-flamed maple. The fingerboard is select ebony.

Varnishing

We expertly varnish the instrument with traditional oil varnish in a stunning golden brown. The varnish is applied by hand in the traditional manner; not sprayed! 

The Sound

This instrument has a perfect balance of bold depth of tone and brilliant clarity. The projection is powerful (loud and sonorous) and even across all four strings.

After all, we have years' of experience with making 3" wide backpacker violins sing like full-size violins...imagine what we can do with a full-size instrument.

Summary of Features:

• Top: Well-graduated and tap-tuned top-grade European Spruce
• Back and Ribs: Well-flamed maple
• Tuning Pegs:Traditional ebony, upgradable to Wittner Fine-Tune Planetary Tuning Pegs. These pegs look like ebony, but have a hidden internal gearing. The aluminum shaft of these pegs is not visible when the instrument is strung. See our articles, Why Wittner Fine-Tune Planetary Pegs are a Good Idea and Secret Fiddle Tuning Weapon.
• Bridge:A high-quality (generally Bausch, Teller or Aubert) is cut and adjusted for type of strings that will be using and your style of playing. We have been playing and setting up fiddles for over 3 decades and know how to trim a bridge for FIDDLERS!
• Chin Rest: Polished ebony Guarneri-style
• Tailpiece:Choice of Wittner Ultra polycarbonate with 4 built-in fine tuners or a Dov Schmidt Harp compensated ebony tailpiece with either a single fine-tuner for the e"-string or NO fine-tuners. You would choose the Dov Schmidt Harp if you opt for the Wittener Fine-Tune Planetary Tuning Pegs.
• Tail Gut:Wittner or Sacconi nylon.
• The Strings:The standard strings for this instrument are Helicore Medium Gauge or Thomastik-Infeld Vision Synthetic Core. Both strings are easy on the fingers. The Helicores a powerful and bright, whereas the Visions are powerful and dark. We always use the correct gauges of strings for the best sound on your instrument! We assume that, as a fiddler and unlike a violinist, you will be using the following tunings:
  • Standard: e” a’ d’ g
  • A Cross-tuning: e” a’ e’ a
  • G-D Cross-tuning: d’ g’ d’ g
  • D tuning e” a’ d’ a
  • Low D tuning d" a' d' D (used by many for such tunes as "Midnight on the Water" and some versions of "Bonaparte's Retreat.")
• We can accomodate whatever you wish or advise you on mixed-gauge string sets...we have tried just about anything you can imagine with respect to "unconventional" stringing to accomplish specific musical goals.

We Sweat the Small Details that make a BIG Difference

• We always tweak the sound post position for the best sound possible
• Unlike most new instrument setups, we actually go to the trouble to adjust the distance between the tailpiece and the bridge to achieve optimal tone and volume from your instrument.

We now have a low cost, well-appointed, expertly-varnished fiddle for about $350, and that includes the case. Until we think of a better name, we are calling it the "Pretty Good Fiddle" by Don Rickert Lutherie. This nice and affordable fiddle is available at our Adventurous Muse Store.

How did we do it?...we finally found a well-made Chinese "white" violin (i.e. basic unfinished instruments with no accessories) from a trusted U.S. distributor that we can craft into a really good fiddle that we are proud to put our label in.

We discovered this new use for these Chinese white fiddles quite by accident. We had been using them for several years to test new varnish formulas and to uncerimoniously cut off their necks to use for prototyping of our high-end instruments. After some testing, we finally realized that we could turn these inexpensive fiddles into instruments that someone would be proud to own.

The "Pretty Good Fiddle" looks a lot like our Performer Pro Master Fiddle, but with far less dramatically flamed backs and ribs. Photos of the backs of the two instruments should illustrate the difference. If you cannot see the difference, what can I say?

   

They play and sound wonderful...in many cases, better than a lot of the vintage fiddles played by master fiddlers! (like my own 120 year old German-made Reinhold Schmidt, for instance). Here is a list of some of the features (NOTE: ALL of these features are expertly-implemented at the Don Rickert Lutherie Wild Rock Studios in the North Georgia Mountains...Hiawassee, GA, USA!):

• Traditional hand-rubbed oil varnish
• Flawlessly fit real ebony tuning pegs
• High-quality German, Swiss or French bridge
• D'Addario Helicore Strings
• Wittner Ultra Tailpiece with 4 built-in fine-tuners
• Polished ebony over-the-tailpiece chin rest
• Nice arrow-shaped featherweight case

Shakori Hills is located at:

• 1439 Henderson Tanyard Rd. Pittsboro, NC 27312
• Phone: 919-742-1746
• email: hoppinjohn@shakorihills.org

The Workshop (Summary Description - See Detailed Description)

This workshop is FREE!...even the materials we supply, such as practice tailpieces and various weights of fishing line to simulate gut strings for practicing the different string knots and loops we will be teaching you. This will be even more fun than a workshop on fly-tying! Now how about that for a bargain? :-)

By arrangement with the Hoppin' John management team, we will be offering the workshop described below by the Adventurous Muse Store / Don Rickert Lutherie vendor tent, times TBA.

The workshop, with a significant hands-on component, will cover how to install the right strings and accessories, as well as proper bridge adjustment, on fiddles for various periods and genres going back to the 1700s. We will save you a lot of time and money on broken gut strings by showing you how to install them the right way...can't do much about keeping them in tune--fiddlers prior to the mid-20th Century spent almost as much time tuning as they did playing.

In addition to covering the basics of historically authentic fiddle setup, we will be demonstrating the playing styles of each period. Several guest fiddlers, all masters of the period fiddling styles they will demonstrating, will be assisting. Don Rickert will be demonstrating the late 18th Century fiddling styles of Neil Gow and Thomas Jefferson.

The primary periods we will cover:

• Late 1700s to mid-1800s
• Civil War/Minstrel Era
• Late 19th and Early 20th Century (about 1920)
• 1930s - 1950s
• 1960s - Present Day

To reiterate, we will be discussing and demonstrating fiddle setup, as well as demonstrating the playing styles of each historic period.

If you intend to have us set up your own fiddle to earlier period specs, you might give us a "heads up", so that we are sure to bring a sufficient supply of the right bridges, tuning pegs, tailpieces and strings. Just to set your expectations, older period pure gut strings cost about $60 and good (the kind we use) modern gut strings are about $150.

email: don@DonRickertDesign.com

Shakori Hills is located at:

• 1439 Henderson Tanyard Rd. Pittsboro, NC 27312
• Phone: 919-742-1746
• email: hoppinjohn@shakorihills.org

The Workshop (Detailed Description - See Summary Description)

This workshop is FREE!...even the materials we supply, such as practice tailpieces and various weights of fishing line to simulate gut strings for practicing the different string knots and loops we will be teaching you. This will be even more fun than a workshop on fly-tying! Now how about that for a bargain? :-)

By arrangement with the Hoppin' John management team, we will be offering the workshop described below by the Adventurous Muse Store / Don Rickert Lutherie vendor tent, times TBA.

The workshop, with a significant hands-on component, will cover how to install the right strings and accessories, as well as proper bridge adjustment, on fiddles for various periods and genres going back to the 1700s. We will save you a lot of time and money on broken gut strings by showing you how to install them the right way...can't do much about keeping them in tune--fiddlers prior to the mid-20th Century spent almost as much time tuning as they did playing.

In addition to covering the basics of historically authentic fiddle setup, we will be demonstrating the playing styles of each period. Several guest fiddlers, all masters of the period fiddling styles they will demonstrating, will be assisting. Don Rickert will be demonstrating the late 18th Century fiddling styles of Neil Gow and Thomas Jefferson.

The primary periods we will cover:

• Late 1700s to mid-1800s
• Civil War/Minstrel Era
• Late 19th and Early 20th Century (about 1920)
• 1930s - 1950s
• 1960s - Present Day

To reiterate, we will be discussing and demonstrating fiddle setup, as well as demonstrating the playing styles of each historic period.

If you intend to have us set up your own fiddle to earlier period specs, you might give us a "heads up", so that we are sure to bring a sufficient supply of the right bridges, tuning pegs, tailpieces and strings. Just to set your expectations, older period pure gut strings cost about $60 and good (the kind we use) modern gut strings are about $150.

email: don@DonRickertDesign.com

What We Will Cover:

Late 1700s to mid-1800s: Fiddles during this period had pure gut strings. After 1790, copper-wound gut g-strings began to appear. Neither the shoulder rest nor the chin rest had yet been invented. The fiddling of the day was highly-influenced by Scottish and Scots-Irish (i.e. Ulster) fiddling.

• The popular playing styles, both with chin to the RIGHT of the tail piece AND fiddle resting on the shoulder will be demonstrated.
• Special emphasis on the 1780s period during which Neil Gow (the father of Scottish fiddling) and President Thomas Jefferson were fiddling (note: Tom Jefferson is known as a violinist; however, he broke his wrist, which limited his playing to first position. With the help of his younger brother, he became a pretty respectable fiddler).


Civil War/Minstrel Era:Pure gut strings with a copper-wound gut g-string were common (no steel e" strings yet); however, the unwound g-string continued to be used by many fiddlers. Even though the chin rest had been invented (by Louis Spohr), its use was uncommon, especially among fiddlers. The shoulder rest was not yet invented. We will show you a mid-19th Century replica Spohr Chin Rest and how it was installed.

• The playing style, by the 1860s, had evolved to something like a classical hold (chin on the fiddle to the left of the tailpiece), but the bow was held on the shaft rather than at the frog.
• A well-known Master of the fiddling of this period will demonstrate the predominant playing style applied to the genuine Civil War Era tunes.

Late 19th and Early 20th Century (about 1920): This period was the dawn of what we now call Old-Time fiddling. The typical stringing was still a wound-gut g-string, with the rest of the strings being pure gut. The steel e"-string was invented about 1880 and was slowly adopted by fiddlers. It was during this period that a distinct "fiddle setup", with a low action and flat-arched bridge, appeared.

• Curiously, during this period, the classical chin to the left of the tailpiece instrument "hold" devolved into playing on the arm in a manner similar to the early Baroque period (1600s), in part, no doubt, so that fiddlers could sing while they were playing.
• The main reason, however, for the "Baroque hold" probably had more to do with the fact that early recording artists were pictured holding their fiddles in such a manner!
• We will demonstrate playing the fiddle in this manner, which pretty much limits one's playing exclusively to first position.


1930s - 1950s:By this time, modern wound-gut strings with a steel e"-string were common. The Bluegrass style came on the scene and many fiddlers began to play "fancy", many using a chin rest to keep the fiddle stable for playing in 2nd through 7th positions (high on the neck, with little use of open strings) just like an orchestral violinist.

• A correct (at least close to correct, from a classical violin perspective) bow hold (at the frog) became common.
• Old-Time fiddling, except in rural mountain areas, diminished in popularity. Even though the same tunes were often played, they were "jazzed up" versions, often in keys not normally used in the older style of playing.
• We will demonstrate some "fancy fiddling" from this era.


1960s - Present Day: By this time, most fiddlers were using all steel strings. Beginning in the late 1950s, thanks to musicians like Pete Seeger and groups like the "New Lost City Ramblers" (fun fact: Jerry Garcia played banjo and occasionally, the fiddle. in this group).

• Interestingly, the "Holy Modal Rounders", loved by many and vilified by the "Folk Establishment" appeared on the scene with their warped versions of Old-Time and older tunes.
• It has been said that if the Holy Modal Rounders had learned to sing and play in tune with something even close to good timing, they could have been one of the greatest Old-Time bands ever...they didn't, so they became perhaps the first "Punk Old-Time" band. With all their flaws of musicianship, the Holy Modal Rounders were the inspiration to many of us!
• What we have today in Old-Time fiddling is a return to many of the techniques used a century ago, combined with attention to really good musicianship, no doubt inspired in large part by the great Bluegrass fiddlers.
• In addition to showing you how to set up your fiddle for contemporary Old-Time playing, we will demonstrate some really good Old-Time fiddling as it is played today.

***********************

The upcoming 5th Annual Hoppin' John Old-Time & Bluegrass Fidders' Convention is at Shakori Hills in Silk Hope, North Carolina (Sept. 15th - 17th, 2011).

Shakori Hills is located at:

• 1439 Henderson Tanyard Rd. Pittsboro, NC 27312
• Phone: 919-742-1746
• email: hoppinjohn@shakorihills.org

Good Old Hoppin' John

There are many good and great Fidders' Conventions, but the Hoppin' John Old-Time & Bluegrass Fiddlers' Convention is usually the ONLY one we attend as vendors. Hoppin' John is in the "GREAT" category. Besides being really fun for us, people actually buy stuff from vendors at Hoppin' John. This year we are pleased to tell you that we will be co-located with our friends, SG Music Company, owned by Shay Garriock and Leslie Staggs (online: SG Fiddles), this year.

While there is a lot of Bluegrass music at Hoppin' John, it is primarily an OLD-TIME fiddlers' convention that actually welcomes (rather than merely tolerates), "Regressive Old-Time" (19th and early 20th Century style, played raw!), as well as so called "Neo-Old-Time" (aka, "Alternative Old-Time", "Old-Time Punk", etc.) contestants.

The overall vibe is mellow, tolerant and "family-friendly" with a significant all-night partying element (once the kids have gone to bed). The ultimate party is the Saturday midnight to the wee hours free form performance/dance. This year the "Freight Hoppers" will be playing at that event...if you like the REAL Old-Time/Roots music, you will love these guys! You can check out some of thier music by visiting their home page.

At the same time, many authentic Civil War Era musical reenactors attend...we are "tight" with the 1st North Carolina Volunteers reenactors and an associated musical aggregation known as the Huckleberry Brothers, for example.