Hi all,  I have a question about the way of making vibration on a
mechanical violin.  This is for helping me to realize the design of
one which I'm making at this moment.

I am a mechanical machine design engineer as my profession, and a
fanatic hobbyist of mechanical musical instruments in my free time.
I'm using Autodesk Mechanical Desktop 3D design software for making a
fully three dimensional design of it, and after that I'll try to build
it.  The control is fully MIDI compatible and already realized and
working.

With the knowledge of the Mills Violano I have at this moment, and
the fact that my wife is a violin player for her profession, I have
a conflicting idea of the vibration ("tremolo", they say in your
neighbourhood).  Normally vibration is moving the pitch of the tone up
and down around the straight note, and is realized by moving the stop-
ping finger from the violist to and from the violins cam, as clearly
seen in a playing orchestra.

However, when understanding the pendulum system and the moving tail
of the Mills Violano in the right way, it should result in just a
periodically moving up and back of the pitch, no moving down.  The
tail is moving in both directions but the string's tension only goes
higher and just back, not lower.

Of course I don't have a Mills Violano for myself, so I'm not able to
investigate my problem in a proper way.  Maybe someone understands my
question, and I wonder if the Mills Violano has this way of vibration,
as I mean to understand how it sounds and if it sounds correctly.
Otherwise the pendulum works differently, maybe a pre-tension in the
'neutral' position, but I don't know it.  Can somebody give me some
advice?

Thanks in advance.

Jeroen Theelen
The Netherlands, Europe

 [ Hallo Jeroen, and welcome aboard "the good ship MMD"!  Among our
 [ readers are owners of the Mills Violano-Virtuoso, and also owners
 [ of the Hupfeld Phonoliszt-Violina.  This is a fine topic for
 [ discussion in MMD.
 [
 [ My English dictionaries of 1930 and 1960, and the Dictionary of
 [ Musical Terms (1895), agree upon the meaning of these words in
 [ commonplace American text (derived from Italian):
 [
 [ tremolo - the tone (frequency) is varied, but the amplitude is
 [   mostly constant.
 [ vibrato - the amplitude is varied, but the frequency is constant.
 [ tremulant - a device for the pipe organ which creates simul-
 [   taneous tremolo and vibrato by varying the wind chest pressure.
 [   Hence we we may also call the device on the Mills Violano a
 [   'tremulant'.
 [
 [ The engineer says that tremolo is frequency modulation of the tone,
 [ while vibrato is amplitude modulation.  Anyhow, this is a fine topic
 [ for discussion at MMD. :-)   -- Robbie