The Amplified Violinist
An Electric Violin Primer

Why go electric?
Aren’t electrics just a fad? Are they really needed? Shouldn’t a good violinist be able to project to the back of the concert hall without any help?
If you are a Classical-only violinist, a good quality acoustic violin might be all you need. Likewise, Bluegrass or OldTime fiddlers who are only playing small intimate events (50 audience members or less) might not need an electric violin.
But even in these acoustic-oriented events, it is not uncommon to see musicians circling around a common microphone, mixing them selves manually by physically moving closer to the mic when they are featured in a song. The sound that the microphone receives is then amplified out of powered speakers faced at the audience. Aren’t these musicians really “electrified” at that point?
Going electric can be so so much more though!

Amplifying options: Microphone
Microphones, or “mics” for short, are a very good way to get the real sound of your instrument reproduced in the most accurate way. They are very good at “hearing the air and wiggle of the wood” of your violin, very much, just like your ears do.

Like in the above Bluegrass example, a whole acoustic-oriented group CAN share one microphone, if it is the right type that is sensitive enough to “hear” the players at a distance of a few feet. The problem with these extra sensitive mics (usually called a “large diaphragm condenser” type), is that they are prone to also sense the sound coming out of nearby speakers and can also try to RE-amplify that sound making the famous and irritating squealing feedback “loop.” This can actually damage your, and the audience’s hearing; and sometimes even damage the equipment, if not careful and the feedback quickly squelched!

Another option would be to give each player their own mic, though of a different type (a “cardioid dynamic”). These “tight pattern” mics, often favored by singers, actually only sense sound when you are quite near them and reasonably reject sounds that are farther away. They also sound weaker and thinner the farther you get away from them, so the resulting “con” of this approach is that you have to stand, pretty much, in one place while you perform, which can have it’s drawbacks for entertainment purposes. These, mics, though better at feedback rejection, CAN in fact, still feedback too.

A third mic option are mini-mics that clip right on your instrument. They definitely make you more free to move about on stage if you are not afraid of tripping on a cable dangling from your instrument, or, can be coupled with a fancy broadcaster “belt” pack that transmits your sound wirelessly to a radio receiver at the speaker system. This can be pretty cool for your entertaining on-stage dance move purposes, but can get costly and are somewhat complicated to setup.

I used one of these mini-mics for a while, placing it about a 1/2” behind my bridge. It sounded very realistic coming out fo the larger Public Address (PA) speakers at the concerts I was playing, and rarely fed back as long as I did not have any “monitor” speakers (special speakers in “wedge” shaped enclosures on the floor facing performers) turned up too loud. I usually had them turn those off for me and just relied on hearing my instrument acoustically since it was only a few inches from my ears and just trusted (and prayed!) that it would also sound good to the audience. It usually did, so I was told …though it is a bit nerve wracking not being in control if that myself!

Another, sometimes embarrassing, “con” of this sensitive mini-mic a couple inches from my nose and mouth was, if I got excited and breathed too hard, it could sound like THUNDER coming through the speakers! Or, worse, if I yelled instructions to my band mates (“The BRIDGE! You idiots!”)… that mic can amplify what you did not intend the audience to hear too! Oopps.

Mics, although they can be glorious as “acoustic amplifying” tools, do have their drawbacks.

So, what’s a fiddler to do?

Add a Pickup to your existing acoustic instrument
There are dozens of “pickups” on the market* that you can add to your acoustic instrument, either temporarily or more permanently. Usually these are made from a special man-made crystal film element that senses pressure changes.

*Some popular piezo pickup manufacturers are: Fishman, Barbera, Yamaha, Barcus Berry, and “The Realist.” I personally like to support my friend Eric Aceto’s work. Check out his Ithaca Stringed Instruments pickup!

This same technology shows up in many places in our modern lives, including being embedded in our roads near traffic signals to sense when our vibrating automobiles are above it, telling the light when to change.

The interesting thing about crystals in general is that, when squeezed, they emit a tiny bit of electricity. That seems like a bit of magic to me, and I personally have no clue as to how or why this happens, but I think it’s pretty cool… and useful for us acoustic musicians trying to be louder without the problems mics can give us.

In general, these “piezo” crystals, as they are called, can do a pretty good job of amplifying the vibrations of your wood shaking. They don’t really “hear” the sound of the air coming out of your instrument, like a mic does, but they do a decent job and are MUCH more dependable and generally feedback free compared to a microphone.

On the “con” side, a piezo’s lack of “air” can make it sound a bit sterile and clinical sometimes. Many will call them compressed, squashed, or nasal-y… but this is simply because of their need to be squeezed in order to work, so we can’t really blame them for that, it’s just in their nature.

Another “rub” to using piezo’s is their output can sometimes be a weak mismatch to other equipment you’ll be plugging into. I usually fix this problem by using a battery powered “preamp,” of which there are many on the market. Some of these preamps have extra controls to shape the tone and overall signal strength being sent to the PA system. This can be a nice pro touch and also can serve as a way to have some personal “policing” control over the sounds coming out of the PA speakers …especially if you do not have confidence in your sound technician! See more on electronic gizmo’s below.

It should also be stated that, as one might expect, some brands of pickups are more natural sounding than others, and also that some (or MUCH) experimentation might need to be done to find the “sweet spot” on your instrument where the piezo will get the proper squeeze for best signal without sounding too squashed and scratchy.

I’ve had some success with using BOTH piezo’s and a mic at the same time… though having double systems and cables can mean you have twice as much to worry about on a gig! This means that, if you are not careful, all this can become a distraction to what we are playing music for in the first place!… to enjoy ourselves and share that joy!

Is there a better way?

The Dedicated Electric Violin Option
Just like there exists both electric and acoustic guitars, so can we have both kinds in the violin world. I am still surprised at how many folks have never heard of an electric violin or even believe that such a thing exists! We are about 80 years behind the guitar world in awareness of this, but I feel that we are starting to catch up!

Historically, electric violin inventions started showing up right after the “roaring (19)20’s when, acoustic violins, after having largely been previously considered “the king of instruments” for a couple hundred years, simply started to get drowned out by louder instruments like trumpets and drum sets that were growing in popularity.

Electric violins generally are designed to not be too concerned with acoustic sound, with all the vibration energy produced by your bow, being focused into a pickup and circuits, then down a cable to an amplifier that adds power from the wall, and on the other end, shakes a speaker cone that, in turn, shakes the air to get to your ear, wiggle your ear drum, and send a signal to your brain… Actually, it’s much like your acoustic violin sound goes from your bow hair, ultimately to your brain… but with a couple extra steps in-between.

Electric violin designs can range from a simple acoustic instrument with a more permanently installed pickup, to more adventuresome body-less or even headless designs! Pretty much, once the need to make acoustic sound is taken out of the equation, the sky is the limit, as to shapes and materials, as long as it has strings and you can bow it!

One side advantage of having a dedicated electric violin is that it can also be used as a quiet practice instrument that can be barely heard more than a couple feet away, so we can practice in private and not bug people too much.

The manufacturing giant Yamaha Corporation, made a big marketing move back in the 1990’s when it released its “silent violin” line, which was really an electric violin in disguise, but with an added headphone jack and internal reverb (echo) for practicing. They gambled that there were millions of violinists in the world that might like this option and a much smaller market of folks like myself, who were interested in plugging in and playing loud Rock n Roll!

The Silent violin also had a special input jack so you could practice to pre-recorded music tracks played from a device like a phone or CD player, all heard in the headphones privately. Genius marketing. The shocking part for most was its look. It was just a neck with a plastic skeleton of the outline of a violin body.

The problem I have with purely electric violins is that they almost all are piezo pickup based, and still tend to all sound a bit stuffy and nasal to my ears. Some are better than others of course. Many folks have simply gotten used to this stuffiness and just expect electric violins to sound different than acoustics, just like guitars do. That’s all fine, but guitarists would never stand for all guitars being piezo-only based! Electric GUITARS have a very rich history and development of their pickups which are almost all magnetic-based rather than piezo crystals.

On an electric guitar, magnets wrapped in a coil of wire are mounted just below the strings and sense the movement of the strings in the air above and in the invisible magnetic field surrounding them. Magnets are a bit of magic too, and another thing that I do not quite understand, but in general, electric guitars sound much more natural and dynamic than their amplified piezo acoustic counterparts. This is probably mostly because they are not being pressurized to work, and can do their job of “sensing” in more freely moving mediums (like air and magnetic fields).

So you might logically ask, why don’t we just add a magnetic pickup under the violin strings like an electric guitar? Logically this should sound just as loud and clear as the electric guitar, right? …well… I tried it… and it sounded bad at best! Why? I was stumped at first until I realized the different physics of electric guitars vs electric violins… THE BOW.

You see, when you pluck a guitar string, it does not just wiggle back and forth, but if you were able to cut a cross section of the guitar string’s movement, you’d also see it moving in circles, figure eights, and other complex shapes! All these varied movements are sensed by the magnetic field and faithfully reproduced in a varied and matching rich sound when it comes out the other end (the speaker).

Violin strings, by comparison, when bowed, basically only move back and forth in a line, left and right… not up or down, not round in circles… only in a skinny little pattern, of which the magnets also faithfully reproduce, sounding much like singing with your nose plugged! In my tests, pizzicato/plucking the violin string produced, like a guitar, a relatively full and rich signal, but bowing?… thin and wimpy… and not just a little worse, but dramatically worse! I was bummed.

So, I threw my experiments in a drawer for a few DECADES, and joined the piezo violin world the best I could, never being completely satisfied, but tolerated the limitations of our trade… until one night, I had a dream…

I dreamt I was playing a violin with a thick creamy distortion sound, much like a famous humbucker-ed Gibson Les Paul model electric guitar. Tears of joy were streaming down my cheeks in the dream. Interestingly, I also was playing Tom Petty’s “Running Down a Dream” song in my dream! Dreams are sometimes weird like that. Note: I also, as of this writing, happen to live in Tom Petty’s hometown of Gainesville, FL, adding to the dream’s irony.

I woke up and told myself that I had to find that sound! I searched through my old drawers of junk and started experimenting, trying 100’s of things until one day, I finally figured it out! I now am the proud owner of a patent for a double magnetic pickup bowed instrument system produced by my company “Outlaw Fiddle” (www.outlawfiddle.com).

Piezo’s can faithfully reproduce the tone of shaking wood, but my new magnetic system is free and clear to vibrate and produces a likewise, rich and dynamic tone, not unlike an electric guitar played cleanly. Not necessarily acoustic, but just different…. like an amplified acoustic guitar is slightly different than a clean electric guitar. Same notes. Same technique. Different tone. Different intent.

My invention aside, no matter which electric technology you have or choose, once you are in the electric world, ALL KINDS OF OTHER AVENUES AND OPPORTUNITIES ARE AVAILABLE TO YOU!

Amplifiers
The amplifier, or “amp,” is the part of your gear that “amplifies” or makes louder, the sound you send it. This is accomplished by adding electricity from the wall power in your home to move a larger magnet attached to a cone (called a speaker) that vibrates to mirror the input signal you send it.

Your first logical question might be: Do Violin amps exist? Answer: No. Not really at this point in history. The electric violin market is not big enough or filled with violinists demanding such things… yet.
So us violinists, are relegated to using other available amplifiers. No worries though. There are many good options.

Guitar Amps
There are thousands of these available in all kind of sizes, powers, and qualities, some better than others for violin. Two different categories of guitar amps are vacuum tube and solid state varieties.

Tube amps are considered to sound naturally warmer and are my personal favorite, as you can push them into a sweet and musical sounding overdrive if you are into that sort of thing. A down-side of these great sounding amps is that they have actual old school hot glowing glass vacuum tubes inside that can be damaged over time and need replacing once in a while. They are also pretty heavy to move around.

Solid state or digital amps, have the advantage of not needing to warm up and are fairly impervious to bumping them around in inclement weather. These also can have other digital effects and circuits inside and can be very versatile. Some think the these amps don’t sound as warm or pleasing as their tube-based cousins, but advances in technology are getting better all the time.

Other types of amplifiers:
Acoustic amps are tuned for acoustic instruments and tend to reproduce all frequencies more evenly, like a home stereo system. By comparison, electric guitar amps are very “colored” to favor the sonic needs of electric guitarists only… but these can still work with the right electric violin (like my Outlaw Fiddle, wink ;~).
PA systems, officially called “Public Address” Systems, are similar to acoustic amps, but are more specifically tuned to reproduce voice and full recordings. These can work nicely for acoustic violins with a pickup too!

Bass amps are, as you might guess, tuned to be best for bass instruments and favor the low notes more loudly. Since bass players like a clean sound in general, these amps can still work in a pinch for your violin if you just turn the bass knob down a bit.

Amps with built in effects: These are becoming more and more universal (except in the old school tube amps). Modern digital guitar amps will now have other amps “modeled” inside them, along with all kinds of effects (see below) that can be arranged and saved into your own favorite personal presets.

Size matters, how loud do you need to be?
There’s many different ways to go with amps, and how big and loud you might need them to be for your uses is an important question. The days of stacks of super ear splitting-ly loud* guitar amplifiers are mostly gone, now that the PA systems that reproduce them to the audiences have improved so much over the years. In the old days (1960’s) one needed a big and loud amp to fill the concert hall. Today we use much smaller (and quieter) rigs that have special outputs that feed your sound to the PA system or get it there by simply placing a microphone in front of the amp’s speaker cabinet.
*Note: see my video about hearing protection BELOW.

Using your amp as a personal monitor. This is more of the norm now. Players choose an amp that pleases and encourages them, and is just loud enough to compete with other instruments (like drum sets), using it more as a personal monitor than anything else.
Sending your sound to the PA can also come directly from your effects, though
coming full circle, just like acoustic environments, the air/mic can matter again! Direct “line outs” from your electronics can sometimes sound sterile too. Speaker simulation software is getting better and better and can help your direct sound seem more “real” again if you choose to bypass the amp idea altogether.

Electronic Effects: Not just louder, but effectively cooler!
Hear audio examples of the effects mentioned below on this special post at the Fiddle Jam Institute.

What are they?
Electronic effects are, you guessed it, electronic gizmos or devices that you can add in to your electric violin’s “signal chain” usually between your violin and the amp, that change or “effect” the resulting sound in some way. They are often placed on the floor and turned on and off with a foot switch that adds in the effect or bypasses it as needed. These are nicknamed “stomp boxes.”

Sometimes effects are put in wider boxes that are then mounted in a more professional “rack” and are called “rack mounted” effects. Often these have more exacting presets, and are dedicated to effects you might want to leave on all the time, like echos or reverbs (read on for more info on those). Most have options to turn them on or off as needed too, but this usually requires you to stop and press a button on its front panel, or have a special dedicated floor switch that will have a cable running to the rack unit to do so.

These days, electronic effects can be programmed into software on your computer too. Most often these are used when recording, with only the bravest pro’s using this kind of setup live, as not too many feel they can completely trust a computer to not freak out, freeze up, or just outright crash during a performance (me included, so far). That said, some of the capabilities in these pieces of software can get pretty crazy (and I mean that in a good way).

No matter what kind of “box” your chosen effect circuitry is crammed into though, they all pretty much fall into 3 or 4 categories or types of effects. I’ll explain below.

Volume oriented effects
I find these to be largely unneeded for violin, since our bow is so dynamic in and of itself. One exception I make to this list is a volume pedal, which is a foot operated rocking plate about the size of the average shoe. Tip, or rock it forward to make it louder, and back to make it quieter (or off). Pretty simple.
Another volume oriented effect you may come across is a “compressor/limiter.” Just like it’s name, it limits the loudest parts of your performance and can boost the quieter parts. Some guitarists like to use these to squeeze a bit more juice and length out of their notes, but I think that they probably are just jealous of our bow technique, so I rarely use one. Maybe you could try one for use when playing pizzicato (plucking) technique, as it could help those “plucky” sounding notes get a bit more length and a little less spike at the beginning.

Echo or Reverb effects
“Echo” or “Delay”, is pretty self-explanatory. You can set them for how long of an echo you want, and how many times it will repeat after you play a note, and how long the effect will take to fade out. The length of delay is usually measured in milliseconds (1000ms are in one second). Better units will also let you set how loud the effect will be in comparison to the original signal too. Many musician’s add a bit of delay for a touch of space, since our instruments tend to sound a bit dry and clinical or “canned” without helpers like these. I’ve also heard players set the volume of the echo to be equal to the original, and only repeat once, to play little improvised duets with themselves. That can be kind of neat too.
Reverb is like when you clap in a cathedral or big hall. You will not hear separate echos, but a wash of sound that will trail off. These can have a variety of parameters and can simulate various sized rooms, like the cathedral or hall mentioned above, or smaller rooms. In better units you can also set how bright or dark the reverb itself will be. I personally tend to favor darker reverbs that just add a subtle air or space to my sounds without getting in the way.

Swirly-type “modulation” effects
This category of effects is kind of cool. Chorus, flanger, and phaser are units you will readily find in music stores. All three work by splitting your signal into two, changing one of those and folding it over the top of the original before mixing them back together.
Phasers are like a swirling tone circuit that splits and circles onto itself. They can be set to have different depths and speeds. Jazz Fusion electric violin pioneer Jean Luc Ponty used this one quite a bit back in the 1970’s. I kind of like it too. It swirls but still retains a tightness that does not change the articulations of my bowing.
Flanger and Chorus effects work in a similar split and layer way, but use changes in subtle time delay-aligning of the sounds. When the delay time gradually changes or oscillates, it creates a detuning effect related to the “doppler” effect we hear when a train goes by and the pitch swoops lower (the pitch actually stays the same if you are ON the train, moving with it).
Flanger effects work by oscillating the rate of the delay between 0 and 15ms. When your original sound and the split altered sound rub together it makes a “swooshing” jet-like effect that can sound like a trippy doubling of sorts. It is unlikely that you’d leave a flanger on all the time, but it is a pretty cool special effect.
Chorus effects work in the same way as flangers but use a bit longer delay range of 15-30ms. The result tends to be more sweet and less special effect-ish. In general, this effect is named “chorus” because the subtle detuning effect makes it sound similar to when two or more people sing in unison in a “chorus”… which sounds thicker. Some players keep the chorus on all the time, though I find it takes away some definition in my sound. I laughed out loud when I heard jazz guitarist John Scofield say that he had to go to “Chorus Anonymous” at one point, to stop using it all the time! Ha!

Don’t cry, just use a Wha Wha pedal.
“Wha” pedals are in a category all by themselves I think. They physically look just like a volume “rocker” pedal but are internally a sweep-able peak frequency tone changer. The resulting effect sounds just like crying “wha wha wha.” As a matter of fact, the most famous brand of these pedals is “Cry Baby.” Some think these are gimick-y but used subtly and with musical sensitivity, can be much like vocalizing. Guitarist Jimi Hendrix was one of the first to make this effect famous. Heavy Metal violinist Mark Wood also uses one of these very well.

The king of all effects – Distortion!
Distortion is created when the input circuits are made to be overloaded. You might think this would sound bad, and it can sound bad, if used improperly, but its singing sound is hard to beat when everything is set up just right. Electric guitarists can’t hardly play WITHOUT distortion, but they do not own the rights to distortion, as any electric instrument can be distorted (like blues harmonica, organ or VIOLIN!). Many folks think adding a distortion pedal is an over-easy cheaters way to rock stardom, but playing with distortion actually takes a subtle musically sensitivity to the sound, as it enhances and accentuates all parts of the sound; the good AND the bad, and to harness all of it takes some skill. An interesting side effect of using distortion is that while playing single notes, they simply sound a bit more “fuzzy,” but when you play two notes at once, a third “difference pitch” is added to the mix. How this works is a bit of physics magic, but it adds an exciting growl to accented notes when you know which ones to mix!

Note: if you are inclined to try distortion on your violin, you will not need to purchase a heavy duty heavy metal pedal! Why? These pedals are designed for guitarists to help them sustain in more violin-like ways! Their advertising even uses wording like this sometimes! In other words, they are trying to BE us! We do not need to sustain, again, because we have a bow, which has infinite sustain! So, I advise trying a simpler and more subtle “overdrive blues” distortion pedal first, just to get some grit, without unneeded squealing and feedback that more heavy-handed “metal zone” pedals are prone to.

Special effects
Though the above covers the basics of electronic effect types, a deeper dive will uncover many special effects and can take you even further… some might think too far to be musical, but as they say, “each to their own.”

Harmonizers: circuits that add pitches above and/or below your original sound, either with a duplicate of your signal or synthesized tones.

Modulating echos: Echos that change pitch with each echo repeat.

Pitch correction effects: these will not even LET you slide or vibrato! A musically interesting way to use this is to just evenly mix this effect in with the straight original sound and it can sound like two independent violinists playing together! …Like, you vibrato and it won’t!

Synthesizers: add a synthesized sound that follows you. I like this kind of thing mixed in subtly. These can sound like an old school oscillator, or be any instrument when using computerized samples. One pedal currently on the market sounds like a Hammond organ playing along with you! Interesting.

Imaging and modeling software circuits: This newest high tech is like a super tone circuit that can take, say, a real Stradivarius sampled in a controlled studio environment, and alter your violin to react and imitate it’s tone! The Fishman Aura pedal does this pretty well. My bandmate once said it made my violin sound more “expensive”… Ha!

This list could get endless, but “Option Fatigue” can be a real thing, so let’s stop there. I suggest you pick one pedal and try it, and go from there. GO to your local music store and plug in to try these. Have fun!

Option fatigue and what I recommend
Choose what you THINK you’ll need and can realistically foresee for yourself in your life. Where can you imagine or visualize yourself playing in the near to mid-term future? What kind of venues? How large? How loud will you need to be? How will you hear/monitor yourself? Will your effects be a part of your personal and individual stylized sound? …or just be an enhancement that you could just as well trust others (like a sound engineer) to add for you? Or, will you need to be versatile and ready for anything? Think, imagine, dream, visualize and choose something do-able and attainable, and go from there.

Performing examples to visualize yourself in:
Take a minute and imagine yourself playing in these situations and see how it feels to you and what you could imagine you’d need to do the gig!
-your living room
-front porch
-pickin’ party
-local outdoor event
-small church
-big modern contemporary church
-coffee house w singer songwriter
-lounge with a jazz group
-blues band bar
-bigger stage in a rock club
-modern country band
-jazz fusion band
-cajun/zydeco band
-gyspy jazz group
-theater or larger gigs
-recording studio sessions
-live streaming
-outdoor festival stage
-with a big band jazz ensemble
-as a jazz soloist in front an orchestra
-on a music competition TV show
-with a guitarist at a restaurant
-at an art show festival
-on a cruise ship
-senior housing entertainment
Dream up your own!!!

Want to learn more?
Hear audio examples and see pictures of the effects written about above on a special page on the Fiddle Jam Institute website HERE.

Check out some of my own stories on how my gear FAILED me in the past and what you can learn from it.

Also, as mentioned above, a quick study of electric instruments would not be complete without a warning on hearing damage if listening too loudly!

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