Hi.
Uh.
TwoSet Violin,
another episode, welcome.
Today,
sacrilegious violins-
to which we react.
Let us begin.
Oh no.
That was the worst intro.
Okay, basically,
for those of you that haven't seen us before,
we're a pair of classical musicians,
we play on classical violins usually made out of
high quality wood,
shaped by an expert luthier.
Mwa!
Mm...
Old-aged wood...
I don't know what type of wood, but...
varnished and polished.
But if you have seen our Bumblebee video,
we all know that that guy played it on a
Well, today we found a variety of other sacrilegious violins...
- Woo! - made out of different materials.
So let us begin.
The first one is an ice violin.
Oh yeah...
It was about 20 years ago
when I built my first ice musical instrument
on top of a mountain.
And I tightened the strings, and I plugged on the wire-
Whoa!
That's impressive!
- That is actually genuinely impressive. - It's hol-
*cough*
And it's hol-
*cough*
We're getting sick just looking at it. It's so cold.
And it's hollow inside.
- How do you- yeah, how do you carve? - That's- I don't know...
I'm really curious to see what it sounds like,
but the strings- It's not made yet, right?
Yes, it's not tightened up properly, yeah.
...plugged on the wires and I heard the sound
coming out from inside the instrument.
And I was so excited by what I heard.
I wonder what that does.
- Very interesting. - Sound enhances.
Yeah.
...and I told them what happened to me
and how excited I was.
They pretty much thought I was a kook.
Whoa...
That was cool.
Yeah.
That was a C by the way.
Welcome to my dream!
That was all ice!
Wait a second. Two seconds.
Where is the electric guitar sounding thing coming from?
There's a guitar there.
- They didn't play- - It's not being played.
Maybe it's the backing track.
But the marimba-
The point I was gonna make though,
is the marimba's out of tune.
- Yeah, cos ice melts, right? - And-
Yeah, that was what I was thinking.
Probably cos it's melting.
Yeah.
It sounds... flat.
Yeah, it's a bit flat.
The ice instrument is made of frozen water.
We're made of melted water.
And that...
physical connection opens the door
for a spiritual connection.
Yeah.
Sure.
Okay.
It would be very cold to play though.
Yeah...
You just-
You get frostbite.
- Yeah, yeah. - Ice burn like...
And for me, when I listen to an ice instrument,
it... it just makes me happy.
Okay, so the chin-
It seems like they put like a cloth here
- They have to... - to protect the neck...
and the... and the jaw.
I'm impressed it makes a sound.
Look.
It's been dangled from the ceiling hey.
Yeah, it is!
I wonder if it's heavy.
It must be.
Wow.
It makes a sound. I'm impressed!
- But it sounds microphoned. - Yeah, I think- I was gonna say it.
It seems like it's mic'd up.
- So it could almost be just as same as the electric violin. - Yeah.
Where it's very muted and nasal.
I was thinking that because
where does the sound bounce off?
Does it actually bounce off ice?
- Yeah, ice doesn't... - And it's like-
- Ice... yeah. - Transmit sound.
Cos with the violin, right?
The wood acts as a sound box.
If you even just do this, right?
Can you hear how loud that is?
That's because the bridge vibration's being
amplified by the sound box.
If you just rub any wood, like the table,
- you don't hear anything. - You don't hear anything, yeah.
I feel like if you did that to ice,
it would just have no sound.
It would just be "Bp!"
To which case,
I'll be curious to see what it sounds like
- not being mic'd up, basically. - Mhm, mhm.
Yeah, same.
It's one thing to build an ice instrument.
It's another thing to maintain it and use it throughout time.
- That's what I thought hey. - Yeah, well...
I mean it's gonna melt, right?
How do you maintain it?
What happens in summer? Do you send it to the north?
Hahahahaha!
Keep it in the fridge.
The ice is always sublimating away into the atmosphere.
Players get up next to the instruments.
You got hot bodies next to cold instruments,
and they're melting.
And the audience walks in.
Suddenly the temperature rises because they're breathing.
In that case, the strings on the stringed instruments
begin to get softer, and the tuning-
the pitch goes down on string instruments.
On the pipe instruments,
for instance, the Rolandophone,
the tubes in the xylophone, and so on.
Those begin to go up.
Oh...
- So, well, that's what we heard. - Yeah.
It's actually true even in an orchestra.
The strings tend to go flatter as the concert goes on
cos of body heat.
Where as the wind, pipe instruments go sharper.
Mhm.
- So the orchestra starts separating. - The longer it is, the harder it gets.
Yeah.
And that eventually led me to realising
that I need to build my own architecture
that can ventilate the heat from the audience
away from the orchestra.
Wow!
So this can only be performed in a freezing chamber...
Yeah.
where the audience's body heat has to be ventilated out,
like a fridge.
Cool!
Ice violin.
Next one is a glass violin.
The melancholic sound of Ikuko Kawai's violin
has a somewhat crystal hardness to it.
But this may not be surprising
as the sound comes from what is thought to be,
the world's first glass violin.
It sounds hard.
It's very...
It sounds like glass.
Yeah, it really sounds like glass.
It's very like-
There's no density. It was just clear sound,
- Yeah. - harden sound.
- Yeah. - Clear and hard.
And over the strings and the pegs
are made of reinforced glass-
Whoa, it's not technically glass
cos there's a wooden bridge.
Yeah...
Look at that.
- What if they use the... glass bridge? - Glass bridge.
Would the sound even go through?
Probably would have no sound.
No.
She sounds good on it though.
- She's playing it well. - But she did- yeah, she can play, so...
Yet so far, no one has tried to make one out of glass.
Not even in Venice.
I wonder why.
Sounded like all these Guinness World Records like
"Whoa, no one's ever broken this record of smashing..."
"The man to run through"
- "as many glass windows in 1 minute." It's like... - Yeah, I know.
- Because why? - Let's just do it.
Like- no one wants to.
So, as they've never heard of a glass violin,
and incidentally-
I just realised...
Imagine, here this glass violin in the violin case,
and you knocked-
- Ohh... Shatter... - You took it on the bus, and you knocked it.
Ohh...
It'd be even more, like, fragile than a wooden one.
Yup, not good.
Not good.
But it's beautiful.
It's a beautiful work of art, I guess.
Design.
Yeah.
Alright, now we have a 3D printed violin.
Technology...
That...
That fingerboard looks very very short.
Oh! Yeah! What?!
I think... Is there something to do with the sound?
If it's the distance that's not enough
for the string to resonate.
Yeah, the proportions of that violin looks very sacrilegious.
Yeah, the head...
The top.
This part looks very big.
You can see the fingerboard and the bridge-
the distance, guys?
- Yeah. - Right now, it's kinda like from here to here.
The fingerboard cuts around here.
It's like the violin's forehead is just really-
got a really big forehead.
It's like...
Jimmy Neutron.
This one sounds more plasticky.
Twanging as well?
Yeah.
Also it sounds like there's lot of reverbs,
so I...
Again, it's hard to say.
All of these they've added reverb,
so it's hard to say what they actually sound like.
Because for example,
play a bit a the violin, and then we'll like
add a bunch of reverb onto it.
Now,
Reverb!
Yeah...
Cool.
I guess,
if you had a 3D printer though, it might be cheap.
I think so, yeah.
Accessible for...
For everyone to learn.
- Yeah. - There you go.
Alright.
And now we have...
an aluminium violin.
Aluminum!
Apparently it's aluminum.
Oh my god...
You know, it's not actually spelt aluminium?
It's aluminum.
So Australians say it wrong.
Ah!!
Oh...
Wait a second.
It's rusting on the inside!
It's rusting!
Is that rusting?
I don't know, it looks like it.
But it would rust, no?
Aluminium.
Does aluminium rust?
I don't know. Get the Practice Period Shirt.
I mean, it's not my type of sound, to be honest.
Sounds too metalic.
Yeah, it's a bit...
- It's a bit sharp as well like, in the ears. - Yeah.
The sound quality.
It's just...
The wooden one just sounds so much warmer.
Yeah.
It sounds more...
warm.
Not so cold and heartless.
Yeah.
Well, there you go.
But I'm sure a lot of heart was
placed into making these violins.
And so...
I mean..
I think it's great people are trying to make things, but-
We're all for innovation!
- But... - Yes.
as purebred...
- classical- - Actually we're not that purebred.
- Yeah, but, but just, yeah. - cos we're doing YouTube, but-
But as a...
close to purebred classical musicians, we...
we love the organic sound of violin from wood
- Mhm. - as it was designed since the early days.
Yes.
And that's why where everyone using wood as well today.
What do you guys think of the sacrilegious violins?
Comment below!
And we'll see you next time.