What's good sound?

0:01Oh, hey. Sorry, love to chat, but I'm busy shopping all the rollbacks and more at Walmart. Grab a what? Cancel that. I gotta grab these big savings on the Walmart app online and in-store like right now. See who? Nope, unavail. The only thing I want to see are the prices just lowered on Tech Home and all my must-haves. Wait, you want to shop Walmart with me? Alrighty, I think I can fit you in.

0:44this is unexplainable i'm meredith hodnot we love hearing from listeners we read every email you send, and we especially love hearing from listeners that have really cool jobs. Could you read the email that you sent in? Sure.

1:04Michael Doran:Yeah, let me just pull it up. Hello, Unexplainable. I'm a violin maker, and I really enjoyed your recent episode on A440 and the journey that it's been to get there. Michael Doran makes violins and cellos in Seattle, and he wrote in to share his perspective on our episode last September called What's A? all about the musical note A and the long and windy road to standardize it around the world at 440 hertz. Instrument makers were on the front lines of that international coordination. And even today, Michael wrote in to us to say that he still thinks about different tunings in his work. One of the interesting aspects that comes up in my work is that some symphonies, notably San Francisco and Boston, are tuning to a sharper A, then sometimes the soloist will turn, you know, one hertz sharper to get a little extra power and projection over the orchestra.

1:59Michael Doran:I made a cello for the principal of the BSO, and I had to make sure it sounded good at A444 or even 445. He wanted higher tension strings as well, so all that adds up to more stress on the instrument. But it really is amazing just how a tiny bit sharper can give a lot more projection and brilliance. And it's an interesting puzzle for makers. Lastly, I do my best to protect my hearing, but I do have occasional short-term tinnitus where things will go quiet and I'll hear a pure tone in one ear for a few moments. And the one in my right ear is a perfect A440 and the left ear is slightly sharp, maybe more like A442.

2:39Michael Doran:Cheers, Michael Doran. Thank you so much for reading that. You're welcome. And I did fact check myself and I called the principal of the Boston Symphony and I was like, do you guys really tune to 444? And he was like, no, we tuned to 441. And I was like, do you ever tune like when you're soloing, do you tune to, you know, one hertz higher to get an edge? And he's like, I don't need an edge. So that's wrong. I did think about it when I made the cello. That's true, but it's not true that they actually tuned to 444. I read that Berlin Symphony turns to 442, but that's the sharpest I could find. So 441 is pretty standard.

3:23Got it. But the 444 is like pushing it.

3:26Michael Doran:Super pushing it, yeah. Although I did have one of my local violinists come in. I actually had their best buddies. They often come in together, Andrew and Max. and Andrew is like a 440 purist. He loves the 440 and he thinks you should just play at 440 and then Max is a 443 guy and he calls it a happy A. Like you tune just a little bit more and he loves that A443 and it was so fascinating to have both their violins in the shop at the same time and one was tuned to 440 and one was tuned to 443 and just the like tiny difference in the sound. Max's violin just sounded so much more, like, direct and focused and kind of, like, edgy.

4:11Michael Doran:It almost made me, like, just a little bit uncomfortable to listen to. And then the 440, you play it and you're just like, oh, it's just kind of sighs. You can kind of sink into that A440. So it's just very interesting how these teeny changes make such a difference. Yeah, I feel like it's so subtle, it's almost subliminal. Yeah, it's just interesting because they're such different players, too. Andrew, he has sort of a more delicate touch, a lighter touch with the bow. Not that he can't play forcefully, but that's just not his default. And I feel like Max just almost, he attacks the violin with his bow.

4:51Michael Doran:And he can play softly, too, but just in general. He likes sort of a heavier bow hand and more movement.

5:01Michael Doran:And then Max just got these super duper fancy literal gold strings. They just came out. And they're like super expensive and they're wrapped in actual gold and whatever. Fun. But gold is heavy and tends to give sort of a warmer sort of a sound. So he's got this like edgy playing style, but then he wants the slightly warmer strings. And, you know, maybe in the end, do they get to the same spot? Like, we've got a delicate player playing with edgy strings and an edgy player playing with warm strings. So, like, maybe we're getting to the same point in the end. When you hear these notes, what are the different ways that you're interpreting the vibes of these different tunings?

5:44Michael Doran:Yeah, right. It's totally like a vibes thing. It almost feels like a presence in the notes, something around the edges. Because it's still an A, right? Like, it's close enough that, like, you would call it an A. But it's just a little bit juiced, a little bit almost, like, anxious. Something like that. And the 440 feels sort of, like, a little more spread out, a little more relaxed. It breathes a little more.

6:18Michael Doran:I wonder what, I don't know, I never hear a 439. So, like, I wonder if that's even more relaxed. It's interesting, too, because like when you're talking about these numbers, right, the 440, the 439, the 444, it's like literally how much energy is going into that note. Yeah, totally. So 440 is 440 cycles per second. So like literally the wave that is traveling through the air is literally oscillating back and forth 440 times a second.

6:58Michael Doran:and so there's a way in which it has a sharper energy because it's literally sharper when it's moving through the air because those little waves are are smaller as they as they get to your ear right and then i mean you know on top of all this like there's the pure tone the a440 right Right? Violins are so neat because they play all of these notes around the primary note.

7:29Michael Doran:We don't always want everything to be as efficient as possible because then it sort of turns into, you know, this pure sine wave kind of a thing, right? Like, I don't actually want all of the energy to go into making that pure tone. I need some of it to go into the overtones and the notes around the note. And that's where you think about, like, tone colors. Like, that's how violinists talk about, like, you know, a sweet tone or a piercing tone. And you should be able, with the same instrument, to mold the sound to do both those things, depending on what passage you're playing and what the player wants.

8:13Michael Doran:Like sometimes you need a great, you know, emphasis staccato and maximum fortissimo, right? And then sometimes you need the instrument to just sort of like speak with like minimal bow pressure and just lightness. And that's part of what makes violin sound so complex and interesting. It's actually quite close to the sound of the human voice. We make all kinds of overtones and things. That's why each singer's voice is distinct and different. and you can easily tell the difference between my voice and your voice or Beyonce's voice or whomever. Speaking for yourself, I sound exactly like Beyonce. Well, I wasn't going to say it, but it's uncanny.

8:50Michael Doran:It's amazing. It's the same way with violins. And so all of those little overtones are changed when you change the primary frequency. So I think a lot about when I'm doing adjusting, like there's high notes, high upper partials to the note in the like 18 ,000 hertz, 20 ,000 hertz, like just on the edge of what humans can hear. And that can also influence this presence. So I feel like when you're tuning higher, maybe it changes some of those partials and things that just kind of influence how you feel about the sound. Right, right. That makes a lot of sense. I come from a cooking background, so like the analogy that's coming to mind is like you can use vanilla extract where it's just the pure vanillin, which is the chemical that tastes like vanilla.

9:41Or you could get this tropical orchid pod that came from Madagascar and got fermented and dried in the sun and has all these other overtone chemicals that round out the taste and make it something much beyond that one primary note.

9:57Michael Doran:Oh, absolutely. That's a great metaphor because, you know, you get this beautiful sort of combination of all of the different vibrations that are vibrating with the room and the air and the bow and the violinist and everything that gets to your ear. It's incredibly complex. I mean, like violins are one of the most complex vibrating machines that humans have ever made. I feel like after 400 years, we're like just now starting to get an understanding of how these things actually work, how they radiate sound, how they vibrate at different frequencies. I mean, it's astoundingly complex, which is what keeps it interesting for me as a maker, right?

10:40Michael Doran:There's a mountaintop in the distance, but you can never quite reach it because, you know, every piece of wood is different and every player is different and every interpretation of sound is different. So you have this wonderful range of what is a good sound. And I mean, that's what we're talking about here with A440. Yeah.

11:02As a violin maker, do you have any unexplainables, any unanswered questions that remain a mystery in the world of instrument making?

11:10Michael Doran:Oh, my goodness. I mean, like, like so many. So many. Nothing but questions. Unexplainable questions. Like, I mean, that's kind of my job, right? The real problem with the experiment of violin making from like a scientific point of view is that there are so many variables. You change one thing and it changes five others. Okay. It's so hard to get like an actual control on the things that you're trying to test. And you can never have the same piece of wood twice. So every piece of wood, even if it's from the same tree, is a little bit different. And so my job as a maker is to take the materials that I have and what I want to make, the sound that I'm going for, and somehow find the narrow path in between those two things to get to it.

11:57Michael Doran:But like, we're just nailing down some of those basic questions like, what is nice sound? And like, how do you feel about it? And, you know, what are we even going for here? And so in my job, it's like, if I do this, what happens? Right. I think of it more like in my job, I'm like, I like can push the sound sort of one way or I can push the sound another way. And with every choice, I'm sort of guessing that it's going to do a little bit more towards It's this side of things a little bit more towards that side of things. Yeah. Like there's this dowel, a post. In Italian, the word for sound post means like soul of the instrument because it's so important.

12:41Michael Doran:This skinny little dowel, exactly where that post is, to the tenth of a millimeter, is so important for the sound. It's not glued in or anything. It's just fit perfectly. Tap the sound post back, you know, a tenth of a millimeter. Does that change the sound? Do we like what's going on? You know, does it emphasize the G string more, the A string more, and tap, tap, tap? It's like playing the game Operation. And then, oh, maybe we need a post that's two-tenths of a millimeter longer. Let's try that. What are some of the choices that you have to make, like, right at the outset as you're envisioning the future sound?

13:19Michael Doran:Sort of generally, I try and think about making something sort of, like, brighter and more powerful and projecting versus sort of warmer and like more chocolatey and perhaps a little bit more intimate. And that's sort of the broad palette that I think about, right? And how do we balance the two? How do we get both, ideally? Getting both of those things is like, that's like the mountain. You know, something that is so sweet and rich and gorgeous, but then you can also, it's very loud and you can hear it at the edge of the hall when you want it to be loud. And, you know, that's sort of like the, that's the mountaintop that we're going for, right?

14:02Yeah. Is there a Doran violin or a Doran cello sound?

14:08Michael Doran:Well, I mean, probably. I mean, I like to think of my instruments as siblings, not twins, right? Like none of two are exactly the same. But I was at a violin making competition. They judge the instruments for like three or four days. And during that time, nobody can interact with the judges or see the instruments because it's all done, you know, blinded. So it's a lot of waiting around and being slightly anxious in a hotel room. And at the end of the competition, they open up this enormous ballroom where all the instruments are. And there were about 500 instruments in there, you know, 200 violins and 100 cellos and 100 violas.

14:46Michael Doran:And so players come in, makers come in, and you can look at all the instruments, and you can play them if you want. So it's just cacophonous sound. People playing a hundred different pieces in all the corners of the room. Right. But several times, I would be talking to somebody, and my back would be turned to the cello section, and I would hear a cello, and I would say, oh, that's my cello. I can tell. That's my cello. And I'd look around, and somebody would have been playing my cello.

15:20Michael Doran:so can I recognize my instruments I think maybe I mean you know we'd have to do a an actual study to to check that out but at least in those instances I did and I was able to pick it out wow wow that's so cool I was wondering uh could you take me on a little tour of your your studio if you're nearby oh sure yeah oh that would be uh I would love to can I warn you that it's a mess. No worries. No worries.

15:54Michael Doran:For the last 10 years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man. And as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat. I am officially running for president of the United States. It's going to be only America first. America first. Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building. But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm going to ask in our new show from Vox. The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump-focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items.

16:37It really does feel like so reactive.

16:38Michael Doran:You know, I think this Iran thing is also going to cause a big split in the GOP. So far, it doesn't among like people who say they're MAGA voters are still with Trump. But like for the first time, you see on a major issue, open opposition from the start of this war. I'm Estet Herndon and welcome to America Actually.

16:59Hi, I'm Brene Brown.

17:01Michael Doran:And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's going to be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree. And we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday.

17:29Michael Doran:The Elves Workshop? That's a front! Okay, so let's see. Here is the studio. It's a one-car garage that we turned into my studio. But, you know, there's this smell to the shop. It's kind of a mixture of like wood and varnish and possibility and, you know, the machines and the music and it all just kind of like rolls together. People who come into the shop are often like, oh, I love that smell. That's the smell of the workshop. And yeah, I love that. That's one of the things I love about the job. And I mean, you're like starting off with wood that I'd recognize in a fireplace. It looks like a chunk of wood.

18:22It doesn't look like a two by four at Lowe's.

18:24Michael Doran:Yeah, totally. That's how the wood comes to me. It often comes in these wedges. And then I take away everything that isn't a violin. A la Michelangelo, right?

18:38Michael Doran:If it's a big tree, this big spruce tree could make a couple hundred violin tops. easily. Like, I've thought about this, you know, in my lifetime, I would be very lucky if I made 400 instruments, you know? Maybe less. 500 would be pushing it. I mean, there's no way. And so, like, the output, my output of my whole life, my whole career as being a professional violin maker, could potentially be covered by, like, one tree. If you had the entire tree, you could make all the instruments for your career. A lifetime's worth of instruments. Yeah. But I don't often get to buy the entire tree. Yeah.

19:24Michael Doran:Let's see. I have over here all of my old vintage power tools. All the power tools in my shop are restored antiques that I like to take apart and fix and tinker with.

19:42What's your favorite tool of the moment?

19:46Michael Doran:Oh, favorite tool. Oh, man. I know. Choosing between your children. That's my favorite tool. Favorite tool. Favorite tool. Okay. Okay. I got it. Yeah. Yeah. So hold on. I got to move some stuff out of the way. So let's see. Let's put this there. So we have here my... It's one of my favorite tools, and it's also a very iconic violin maker tool. It's called a finger plane. And so a plane holds a blade at a specific angle, and you push it, and it shaves the wood a little bit, right? And so there's big bench planes that make things flat that you use with two hands. And then as they get smaller and smaller and smaller, you start to call them palm planes or block planes, right?