2021-01-04
a bit more resilient
I was teaching one of my students yesterday, a middle school violinist. We meet over FaceTime these days, thanks to this pandemic.
I suggested we tune, and immediately she said "Something's up with my D string". Sure enough, the peg had slipped. Winter in New England is a nasty time for instruments; we have crazy swings of temperature and humidity, and the string instruments are quite sensitive to these changes. Basically, dry winter weather and heat dries out all wood, and wooden components in instruments shrink ever so slightly. Pegs, the wooden "keys" that hold the string ends and allow you to tune, change size. Obviously, if the pegs are "slipping", it is harder to tune the violin and keep it in tune.
This is one of those pandemic moments that drive music teachers crazy. In the "old" days, one would smile and say, "Here, let me fix that for you." A half a minute later, with the peg pushed more snugly into the pegbox and the string at the correct tension, you would then proceed to make music. But what do you do in a videoconference? I can't reach through the screen and take the violin.
The age of the student really comes into play here. If the student is too young to handle the directions you would now have to relay through a screen, you are pretty much sunk unless there is an adult nearby willing to give the adjustment a try. My student, as a middle schooler, was capable of taking the fix into her own hands. And, as I saw what was developing, I thought "OK, now she is going to learn how to do rough tuning with a slipping peg."
And she did! I showed her how to balance the violin and where to place her hands around the scroll to get optimal control and leverage. Violins are fragile creatures, so inviting students to make these adjustments always puts me on high alert. The real trick in making this particular adjustment is understanding that you must overcome the peg shrinkage, that is, you must gently but firmly press the peg deeper into the pegbox until it binds. (In the summer, we New Englanders have the >opposite<, more serious, problem; freeing up frozen pegs that have swollen due to humidity.) My student did a great job of getting the tuning close and encouraging the peg to "bind" in the pegbox. Then we used the fine tuners, a second set of precision tuners at the other end of each string, to complete the tuning accurately.
I also took an extra minute or two to tell her about the other adjacent risks luthiers have in working on pegs and strings. It happens sometimes that bridges move when you make larger adjustments to strings and pegs. The bridge is really the "heart" of sound production on the violin; it supports the four strings as they pass over the F-shaped sound holes, and they must be tailor-made to each violin, with the exact shape and thickness and feet that sit absolutely flush on the violin top. The bridge is transmitting the string vibrations into the body of the violin; if it is deficient in any way, the violin's sound is lessened. I have attended a fair number of the massive string program concerts organized a few times each year in my children's schools. They are amazing events, but once a year or so you see some young violinist or violist shocked to have their instrument pretty much explode because a bridge that has either been rocked too far to the side or weakened through tough use gives way. It's not pretty.
I find it hard to "let go" these days; control over so many things that we know and love has been wrenched out of our hands day after day by this pandemic. Sometimes, like during this lesson yesterday, I have to remember that we cannot control every single situation, as much as we would like. Sometimes you just have to "hand it over" to someone or something else and do what you can to ensure a good outcome. Let's hear it for my student, who worked through the problem successfully. Now she knows what to do the next time a peg slips; and here in New England we all know that mechanical issues with your fiddle are a question of "when" not "if".
If you have more questions about this topic, don't hesitate to contact me and we can chat.
K
Previous blog entries