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Bowed guitar sound demonstration in neo-classical style
Founder of “Arpeggione Today” Pavel Goldberg about arpeggione and more.
In this video you will learn:
✅ About the legendary Viennese maker to whom we are grateful for the modern acoustic guitar.
✅ About his apprentice, who founded Martin & Co.
✅ About the history of the musical instrument arpeggione. Why this amazing instrument is necessary for modern musicians experimentalists.
✅ What is the project “Arpeggione Today”? Interview about arpeggione. Its history and usage in modern music. The interviewer with Pavel Goldberg by Anastasia Titko, guitar teacher, blogger, musician. Filming – March 2021.
🎶 Sound samples of Arpeggione – Bowed Guitar
00:05 Sound-1. 01:00 Sound-2. 02:35 Sound-3.
05:22 Sound-4 08:05 Sound-5. 13:19 Sound-6.
14:35 Sound-7. 15:37 Sound-8. 16:20 Sound-9.
18:17 Sound-10. 22:34 Sound-11.
Text of the interview
Pavel, how is it that you, a guitar maker who has been repairing and building guitars for 20 years, became interested in such an extraordinary instrument?
I always really wanted to play the cello.
Ever since I was a kid.
But it didn’t work out.
When I was a kid I was taught the piano.
Then I studied guitar on my own.
But I didn’t have enough time to study the cello.
The guitar is an instrument that can be taught on the street.
Which is exactly what happened.
And with academic instruments, it’s more complicated.
You have to go a long way to become a classical musician.
They give you a small one first, then a bigger one.
You grow and torture your neighbors in proportion to the size of your instrument.
It happens, you have some idea in your head, and you’re slowly looking for a solution for it.
So of course I surfed the Internet and explored,
what ever it is.
I found out about the viola da gamba.
I see, oh, what an interesting thing.
Six or seven strings, almost classic guitar scale.
The instrument existed and was the prototype
of a group of all orchestral stringed instruments.
And somehow I found on the arpeggione.
Surprised. I think, oh, what a cool thing.
When did the idea of building this instrument begin approximately?
Ouch. I’ll tell you right now.
It must have been ’14 or ’15.
I basically invented this instrument for myself
a second time.
I made it and then only some time later I got hold of the drawings of the historical instrument,
which is in a museum in Berlin.
So you were intuitively close?
Actually, a musical instrument has a certain architecture.
It has a certain logic.
We understand that we have a certain length of string.
We understand where the bridge is located in relation to the body.
It gives us certain proportions
of the instrument in general.
Pavel, is it possible to play this instrument only with a bow? Or can you play it with your fingers, too?
Either way.
This tool is universal. It is at the intersection of the bowed instrument family and the plucked instrument family.
We have the frets.
We have an equal temperament.
We have chords.
It’s just like a guitar.
You can play all the guitar music that exists.
Anything you can play on the guitar with your fingers, you can play here. We also have all the bowing techniques available to us.
This instrument is two in one.
And most importantly, any guitarist can take a step toward the cello sound.
The left hand technique is familiar. We just need to learn the technique of the right hand.
The history of this instrument is very interesting.
It could be that in today’s world
everyone would know this instrument.
But?
But it didn’t.
There was a guitar and violin maker in Vienna.
Johann Stauffer.
He was a legendary person.
In the violin world, Stradivarius, Amati
and other pioneers of the modern violin.
There was a man like that in guitars.
And it was Stauffer.
He was the creator.
And the modern idea of the guitar belongs to him.
This is the kind of guitar that created the modern guitar
But the master himself was too creative.
He had an apprentice.
And the apprentice’s name was Christian Frederick Martin.
Does that sound familiar?
That’s right. .
Martin was a guitar master
of German descent.
And he was Stauffer’s apprentice.
When he went to the United States, he opened his own workshop.
And that eventually grew into guitar factory.
You see?
Identical.
It’s exactly the same thing.
Martin was more interested in making guitars.
But if he was more interested in making arpeggione,
there’d be a world-famous Martin & Co that would make
arpeggione.
Now, that’s a bit of irony.
And they were playing arpeggione in the yards today.
Three names are inextricably linked with the name of this instrument.
Johann Stauffer,
Franz Schubert and Vincent Schuster.
Franz Schubert. It is a name that everyone knows.
Few people know that Schubert was a great guitarist.
He loved the guitar very much.
There’s even a quote,
that the guitar is a beautiful instrument that very few people understand.
Vincent Schuster is a guitar virtuoso, a guitar teacher of the time. An experimenter, an innovator.
Apparently the first experimental instrument was made for him.
Schubert wrote a sonata for this instrument
Where did the name Arpeggione come from?
From the fact that you can play arpeggios on this instrument. Very easily. All kinds of chords.
Actually, arpeggione.
it’s attached to this instrument
because of Schubert.
Because the sonata is called
“Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano.”
That’s what he called it.
The man the instrument was made for
just called it “cello-guitar,”
And the manual that Schuster put out
is called “the cello-guitar handbook”.
In simple terms.
And Stauffer himself
called the instrument “guitar de amour” —
the guitar of love.
It’s very lyrical.
The instrument was popular for a while.
It was interesting.
Then the popularity of the instrument gradually waned.
For many reasons.
Schubert didn’t live long after that.
Five years after this event, he was gone.
The maker began to have financial problems.
He ended his life in a poorhouse.
They took the studio away from him just for debts.
Not enough instruments and not enough composers
who would write something else for the instrument.
Maybe something simple to play.
Now the interest in such instruments is growing every day.
The violin sound of the instrument is all rock music. It’s an attempt to play the guitar with the sound of the violin.
I believe this instrument is necessary.
Composers need it.
Film composers, for example.
Experimental musicians need it.
Who are also in search of a sound.
You can practically have an entire string quartet on this instrument.
And if a person plays neither violin nor cello.
If he plays the guitar.
He can record a string part, understanding how the string part is arranged.
Not with samples, but with a live instrument.
That’s precious. You hear it when a live instrument is recorded.
Pavel, do you think that a person who has been playing guitar for a long time, but has never played the cello, would I be able to play something on the arpeggionе right now?
That’s what we’re going to check now.
Let’s try it.
First I need to understand how to get it right.
No tension. It needs to find a place between her legs.
That’s great!
Shall we try it with a bow?
Yeah, let’s make it harder.
Four fingers from the bottom and the thumb in the middle between the middle finger and the ring finger.
I’ll try to play the children’s song “the little Christmas tree is cold in winter”.
That’s a good one.
Difficult!
You know what? I’ll tell you, you’re doing a lot better than I did the first time.
There’s finality now.
You know what strings to use, what bow, what rosin.
It wasn’t the same for me at the time.
And I couldn’t figure out if my hands were all wrong or something else.
You’re doing so much better.
Wow!
And there’s a sound and a melody I recognize.
The rest is a matter of practice.
You know what I realized when I started playing this instrument?
You can’t do that with this instrument. If you’re not in the mood, you can’t play anything.
There’s no sound.
Yes. There is definitely a connection with the emotional state of the player.
It’s pretty sensitive.
I’ve been looking for my instrument for 20 years.
Making different guitars. Acoustic guitars, electric guitars.
And after twenty years, I’m close to having found my instrument.
But not yet the ideal?
To move from that to the ideal.
The instruments that we are starting to make now have a chance to become perfect.
We will be the only company in the world that manufactures these instruments.
Are you planning to produce them in series?
Yes, of course.
Now the first series of instruments that will be based on historical drawings is already in development and manufacturing. But at the same time to be as if these instruments had evolved for 200 years.
After all, the guitar has undergone quite a few changes from what it was 200 years ago.
In the same way, I look at this instrument and wonder what it could be.
Comfortable, well-tuned, good-sounding. So that it would be possible to record the sound.
The most important thing is this. We are not locked into violin conservatism. No violin maker will experiment with shape or materials. No one will change the construction. Make the body thinner or thicker.
They need to achieve a perfect sound in a design that exists. I don’t have that kind of mission. My goal is just to be more experimental.
So it will be different materials. And some design changes in shape.
The “double top”, for example. The frame, inside the body. And so on.
Any other innovations that I think will give the sound an added advantage.
Maybe we’ll even do something helpful for the violin world. Maybe some of the things we find here will appeal to the listener.
We’ll work on that.
I wish you luck from the bottom of my heart and have faith in you!
Thank you! I believe in myself!
This is very important!
First grant for “Arpeggione Today” project
A short story about how the Arpeggione Today project won its 1st grant from the state. It’s a great day.
As an introduction.
It’s always difficult for a creative person. Whether it’s an artist, a musician, a poet. All of these people create a product that is often difficult to monetize. Fancy word but what to do. And any creative person is always in a choice between conjuncture and pure art.
We live in a world of commodity-money relations. And we all know very well Maslow’s pyramid in which creativity is always on a higher step after the closure of basic human needs. So how does a creative person live? To create frankly for the needs of the day? Or to be that starving artist who died in poverty and 200 years later his works became masterpieces. Most often it is this scenario.
Although occasionally there is a third case. When patrons, sponsors, and patrons come to help.
What have I been doing for several years now?
I am reviving life like the Phoenix bird of a beautiful 19th century instrument – the arpeggione, the cello guitar, the bowed guitar.
Thanks to Franz Schubert there is a classical work for this musical instrument. One of the masterpieces of classical music is the “sonata for arpeggione and piano.” I’ve already told you a lot about this instrument and the very interesting history of its origin. You can read it on my website or watch it on my channel.
Now I want to tell you how the project received the highest praise and a development grant from the government of the State of Israel. I could not apply as a master builder of musical instruments. Only as a performer.
This is an injustice, but more about that another time.
The hardest part was to get rid of my inner complexes and my Soviet upbringing about how asking for money is not humble. You should not be proud and beggarly. So, I want to point out to all creative people that this is fundamentally the wrong position. Any creator deserves a quality life. I assure you there are resources in the world for that to be the case.
I found out about the opportunity to apply for a grant as a creative person and as a new citizen of the State of Israel. After that I had to write a resume and prepare a portfolio.
A week after I sent the application I got a call and an appointment for an audition.
The grant committee was in Jerusalem. I decided that I had to demonstrate an excerpt of Schubert’s “Arpeggione” sonata played on the arpeggione.
You could say that this was the first concert in my life in which I played the classics. At least something that wasn’t of my own composition. And on an instrument that I’ve only been mastering for two years. And with a bow. Yes, in front of strict jury of famous musicians and composers. And I have to tell about myself and my instrument in a different language. And at 10 in the morning. And taking into account the road I had to get up at 4 in the morning.
I had been preparing for the contest for 2 weeks, putting aside everything that could somehow distract me.
So the day “X” came.
So that I wouldn’t worry so much, I told myself that it was just an adventure. This is my new experience. I am not going for an exam, but to show people an instrument they have probably never seen. On a charitable mission. Fortunately it went better than I expected. There were a few musicians on the committee who were originally from the Soviet Union. I told them about my project and the instrument in Russian. Everyone was very surprised and interested. And even though I didn’t play perfectly, they gave me the highest score.
And with this award came a financial reward for the purchase of the necessary musical equipment.
This is a great day for me and my project. It was today that I realized that I was doing the right thing and the right thing. And I will find people to work with me. And I will work on getting new sponsors and grants.
Next year is an anniversary year – 225 years since the birth of the great composer Franz Schubert. I want to play his great sonata in that honor.
And also in honor of the master who created the arpeggione, Johann Stauffer.
Yes, in honor of all the masters who make musical instruments. After all, they are always in the shadow of the performers.
Arpeggione Sonata played on the musical instrument arpeggione
Hi!
You may have been perplexed when you started watching this video.
Let me tell you more about it.
Franz Schubert wrote his sonata “Arpeggione” specifically for this musical instrument. And it was originally just called “Guitar Cello”.
I have several videos on my channel devoted to the history of this instrument.
My name is Pavel Goldberg. I’m a guitar master from Russia. I am also a musician, composer and performer. I was fascinated by the arpeggione.
I made this instrument for myself and started a project to revive and popularize this musical instrument – “ARPEGGIONE TODAY”.
My goal is to draw attention to this once underappreciated musical instrument. Now we have even begun production of the arpeggione.
And soon everyone will be able to own such an instrument.
And of course I have the excitement of playing Franz Schubert’s legendary sonata for arpeggione and piano.
I’m still on my way to perfection. I’ve only been practicing for two more years.
Here is the second movement of the Arpeggione Sonata.
Next year is the 225th birthday of the great composer.
At the end of the video is a bit of cuteness. My puppy loves music very much. She listened intently as I played and then expressed her attitude as best she could.
Arpeggione music instrument
Here is a fragment from the Russian TV programme “Kultura” about the history of the musical instrument Arpeggione and the fate of the master who invented it.
My video and audio was used for this programme.
Do not forget to include subtitles and translation.
Calculation of the alternative apreggione (guitar) fret position.
Calculation of an alternative fret position, taking into account the additional tension appearing in the string when it is pressed to the fret.
This calculation is considered in this work, for the musical instrument “arpeggione”.
The data obtained in this work can be adapted to any musical instrument with the equal temperament scale.
When the string is at rest, a tension force acts on the string.
Depending on the diameter of the string, its material, and the tension of the string, it will vibrate at a certain frequency when a finger, pick, or bow is acting on it.
More accurately, it will be the sum of the spectral components – harmonics, known to musicians as – natural flageolets.
In this study, we are interested only in the basic tone. It is the initial parameter for calculating the arrangement of the frets.
Modern musical instruments use an equal temperament scale. It is peculiarity is that the octave is divided into 12 equal semitones.
Increasing the sound of a note by an octave means increasing the frequency twofold. For example: “a1” is 440 Hz, “a2” of the second octave is 880 Hz. The difference in frequency of neighboring semitones is the twelfth root of two.
Formula 1
The modern practice of making guitars and other musical instruments with a equal temperament scale uses this principle in calculating the position of the frets. This does not take into account the rigidity of the string. This results in an inaccurate tuning. And, as you move from the first fret to the last fret, this inaccuracy increases.
This work is intended to provide a mathematical way to calculate the position of each fret, taking into account the rigidity of the strings.
Figure 1 shows the geometry of the string.
AB is the distance from the nut to saddle (or bridge).
AC is the actual length of the string.
12 and 24 are the fret numbers.
Figure 1. String geometry.
As you can see, the height of the string on the 24th fret is more than on the 12th fret.
When we press a string to a fret, we are acting on the string with some force. This additional force is added to the resting tension force and results in an increase in the vibration frequency of the string. And this force increases as the fret number increases, because the distance from the string to the fret at each successive fret is slightly greater than at the previous one.
In normal guitar fine tuning practice, this extra tension is compensated for once by increasing the length of the string. For electric guitars, it’s tuning with the saddles of each string. For acoustic and classical guitars, it is the displacement of the bridge with the saddle by a certain distance. For guitars with a movable bridge – it is moved all together. Usually this value for the first string is about 2 mm – for the 6th string – about 5 mm.
The thicker and therefore more rigid the string, the greater this additional force.
Consequently, the distance by which you have to move the saddle increases.
Usually for this kind of tuning, you compare the natural harmonic at the 12th fret to the frequency of the string vibrating at the 12th fret. The natural harmonic is free of additional tension. The string pressed at the 12th fret has some additional tension. The saddle is moved to such a length that the oscillation frequency of the natural harmonic and the pressed string are the same.
However, as I said earlier, string height is a value that grows from the first to the last fret.
And we compare it once on the 12th fret.
So the guitar has the exact tuning only on the 12th fret.
It is important to note that this calculation must be done for different types of strings, material and gauge.
However, even with the averaged values, this fret location scheme will be more accurate than the geometrical one that manufacturers use now.
Some tuning error can then be compensated by adjusting the saddle position.
Table 1. String height above each fret.
In my instrument, an arpeggione, I use acoustic guitar strings with a flat wound – D’Addario Flat Tops 0,012 – 0,053.
I use five strings and a lower scale – 5 string – “C” of the great octave, 1 string – «c1» of the one-line octave.
Accordingly, my first string is the second string from the set.
Figure 2: Diameter and tension data provided by the manufacturer.
For a standard scale length – 650 mm
(b1) diameter 0.41 mm, tension – 10.53 kg.
The note “E” of the one-line octave.
The frequency is 246.94 Hz
(E) diameter 1.35 mm, tension – 11.05 kg.
The note “E” of the great octave.
Frequency – 82.41 Hz
Input data for the calculation.
Scale length (l) – 650 мм – 0,65 м
Tension (N)- 10,53 kg- 103,19 Н
Diameter (d) – 0,41 мм = 0,00041 м
Density (ρ) – 7800 kg/м3
The frequency of the string is calculated using the formula.
Formula 2
f = 239,7676912 Hz
Table 2
We obtained a value slightly different from the tabulated frequency value. The reason for this is that we took the average density value for steel. . A specific string material may have a slightly different density.
The density of the string material should be determined using the inverse formula.
Formula 3
Table 3
We got a value of 7500.6 kg/m3
Now I need to calculate the tension for my note and string length.
Formula 4
Table 4
The calculation will be made by the theory of flexible thread, taking into account the elasticity of the material.
The formulas are taken from the work of:
https://vestnik.sibadi.org/jour/article/viewFile/352/350
To simplify the calculations, let’s assume that when the string is pressed to the fret, the elongation of the string from nut to fret and from fret to saddle is the same.
In this case we can use the following scheme
Figure 3. Calculation scheme of the flexible thread.
Elongation of each part of the string with elastic modulus (E), the cross-sectional area (А), the initial tension (N0) and additional tension (N)
The shape that the string takes when it is pressed against the fret is described by a quadratic equation and is shaped like a parabola.
Formula 5
Figure 4
Because of the small movements of the string when it is pressed to the fret, we will make another assumption.
Let’s assume that the string is bent only at the point where it is pressed to the fret and that the parts of the string to the left and right of the fret are a straight line.
Figure 5
Table 5
Thus, knowing the height of the string above each fret, we can determine the additional elongation of the string when it is pressed against the fret. And knowing the cross-sectional area of the string (A), the initial tension (N0) and the rigidity of the material to calculate the additional tension.
Formula 6
Table 6
Now we can calculate the total tension of the string on each fret.
Table 7. Total string tension, taking into account the tension of the string against the fret.
From this tension, we can calculate the length of string needed to sound at the frequency we want.
Table 8. Estimated length to obtain the tone of the desired frequency.
The results we obtained refer to the real length of the string. This is the hypotenuse of the triangle. (AC). To obtain the values of the fret positions, we need to know the value in the plane of the fingerboard. (АВ).
The table below gives comparative values of the standard fret position calculation of the values obtained in this study. It also indicates the absolute value of the offset of each fret towards the nut.
Table 9. Standard fret placement, estimated fret placement and absolute difference for each fret.
Figure 6
Conclusions:
The calculations show the correctness of the assumption that it is necessary to compensate for the additional tension that occurs in the string when it is pressed against the fret. The results obtained for the 12 and 24 fret shifts correspond to the values obtained in practice for fine guitar tuning.
The calculation is made for 1 arpeggione string – 2 guitar string.
For thicker and more rigid bass strings, the offset will be much larger.
The calculations have an inaccuracy due to assumptions.
1. The modulus of elasticity of the string material is taken as standard for steel. It may vary slightly for a particular string wire material.
2. It is accepted that the bending of the string occurs only at the point of pressure on the fret. Although the string is shaped like a parabola.
3. When the string is pressed against the fret, the string lengthens evenly along its entire length.
4. The distance from the nut to the tuner is not taken into account.
Using this calculation will return the saddle to the calculated scale length.
Some slight inaccuracy of the tuning – due to the physical characteristics of the particular strings used can be compensated for by a slight shift of the saddle or bridge as a whole.
The inaccuracy of the bass strings will be about half as much as with the standard fret position.
This inaccuracy can be corrected by fanning the frets.
Arpeggione music instrument sound
Pavel Goldberg performs author's cover versions of famous works on a rare musical instrument of the 19th century - the arpeggione.