Fiddling around

I spent some time looking around for something that would make a good 3rd prize for my upcoming sweepstakes, and the folks at Things 4 Strings offered to contribute one of their Bow Hold Buddies™ bow accessories for that purpose. I told them I would definitely consider it, but I would like to test one out first. So, they sent me two of them.

Bow Hold Buddies™ bow accessory

I had a student in mind for the evaluation. He was just starting with using the bow, but he was out sick last week, so that delayed the test. I finally had the opportunity to evaluate the Bow Hold Buddy last night. As it turned out, I tested it on two students.

I’ll start out with the negatives:

• You have to take the frog off to install the Bow Hold Buddy. This is not something you want a beginning student to do, because if you drop that frog, it may bounce up through the hair, and you will NEVER get it un-tangled again (don’t even ask how I know this). That will require a re-hairing.
• Even though the Bow Hold Buddy ad says it is suitable for all size hands, I had trouble installing it on a 1/4 bow and getting into the right position, because of the size and location of the bow’s plastic grip.
• Once the Bow Hold Buddy is installed, you can’t fit the bow back in the case. It’s just too big, and when I tried it, the case would not close. Since installing the unit is not something you want the beginning student to do, that means that it’s going to be really inconvenient to install for a student to take home for practice.
• While the grip that the Bow Hold Buddy is not bad, it also doesn’t seem to be optimal.
• This accessory does not appear to address the issue of wrist flexibility, which is the other major bowing problem I see in almost every beginning student.

Bow Hold Buddies™ bow accessory shown in use

Now for the positives:

• Despite my misgivings about the installation problems and suboptimal hand position, after I installed the Bow Hold Buddy, my beginning student instantly achieved a much better bow control, resulting in a much better tone from his instrument.
• Although I decided not to send the Bow Hold Buddy home with the student, the improvement in bow control persisted after removal with only one brief session of use! I was very pleasantly surprised by that.
• Since I did not send the Bow Hold Buddy home with that student, I was able to try it with another student who was having some trouble with bow grip later that evening. This time, since the bow was a 3/4 size, it was much easier to install and get in the correct position. And, the improvement after just a short while of use was the same with the second student — and it also persisted with her after I removed the accessory.

Conclusion:

I’ll reserve final judgement on the merits of this accessory until I see those students again, but for now, I am very impressed with the instant and persistent improvement that I saw with both of them. I expect that these students will need at most one more brief session with the Bow Hold Buddy. My current take on the Bow Hold Buddy is that it is a really good tool to use with a student who is struggling with the bow hold, and it only needs to be used for a few minutes to accomplish its effect.  I think that it would be useful for any violin teacher to use briefly at a lesson, but not to send home with a student, so the ideal customer for this accessory would be a violin teacher with beginning students. What I may do is just attach it to a spare bow (probably a 3/4 or 1/2 size) to let the student use it for a few minutes — that will get around having to install and remove it for each student.

So, with my initial evaluation out of the way, I will be using the unopened unit as the 3rd prize in my upcoming sweepstakes. I will be using the evaluation unit with any of my students that are having bow control problems. If you need one of these accessories and don’t want to wait for the results of my sweepstakes, you can purchase it today from Amazon for about $30 (click on either of the photos in this post to see it in Amazon.com). In my next two posts, which I hope to get to in the next day or so, I will be describing my choices for 2nd, and then 1st prize. I’m getting pretty close to having the sweepstakes ready to start, but I still have some technical details to work out (in my copious free time, of course!). I’m probably missing the optimum period (pre-Christmas) for having this sweepstakes, but it’s just not ready yet.

Illustration of a Beat Frequency (from WikiMedia Commons)

In my prior post, I wrote about problems I was having with my new hearing aids. I had a follow-up visit to the audiologist Wednesday, in which I finally got (most of) my problems with the hearing aids resolved. The main problem is that even though the “frequency shift” program had been removed, I still hear what sounded like a beat-frequency when listening to a single high-frequency sound. In order to illustrate the problem, I took my violin with me to the visit, and I demonstrated beat frequencies to the audiologist by playing a double-stop slightly out of tune. I then gave her the same lecture I give all of my beginning students about Pythagorean tuning, and how the beat frequencies in the upper harmonics tell a musician whether s/he is in tune with other musicians.

After poking around through the setup parameters for my hearing aids, she got the helpdesk for Phonak (the hearing aid manufacturer) on the phone, and explained the problem to them. I supplied some sound effects to the person on the other end, who concluded that the actual problem was that the DSP (digital signal processor) in my hearing aids was reacting to certain tones as if they were feedback, and doing a feedback cancellation loop.

The feedback cancellation program works like this: 1) A steady tone (note) is detected, and the program notes it as feedback if it lasts more than a few milliseconds. 2) The amplifier shuts down the tone at the detected frequency. 3) The tone persists anyway, since it isn’t really feedback, so the DSP switches the amplifier back on. That three-step sequence gets repeated about 4 or 5 times a second, giving an effect almost indistinguishable from a beat frequency. When I hear that, I automatically try to null it out by small adjustments in my finger position — which fails. The net effect is that I can’t tell whether I’m playing in tune, especially when I’m in a group.

When the audiologist removed the feedback cancellation program, I could hear my violin clearly without that beating distortion. It was a dramatic improvement.

I can now play my violin and piano using my hearing aids.

I would still like to find an audiologist who is also a musician. A musician would have understood the problem(s) on the first visit.

In-The-Ear (ITE) Hearing Aids

I mentioned in a prior post about my hearing aids that I wasn’t 100% happy with them. This morning, I went for my 3-month follow-up, and I complained to the audiologist that they messed up my pitch perception to the point where I just had to take them out in order to play either the violin or the piano. She seemed puzzled by that, and wanted to know if I wanted to give up on hearing aids for now. Since they do help quite a bit at work, especially in meetings, I told her I would stick with them.

I also have some other things I wanted to get adjusted. For instance, the T-Coil mechanism did not seem to be properly adjusted. Whenever I put my cellphone up to my ear, the volume went to maximum in both hearing aids, which I found to be disconcerting and uncomfortable. But the Bluetooth neck-loop adapter I bought didn’t work at all. We played around with that for a while, and then the audiologist called the hearing aid manufacturer, and learned that I needed the option remote control in order to get the two devices to work together. So I requested her to put that on order, which she did.

This is the Bluetooth Neck Loop Adapter I bought through Amazon

As we were wrapping up the session, she asked if there were any other things about the hearing aid that I thought to be strange. There was. I noticed that when I am wearing the hearing aids, the beep that sounds when I set the house alarm seems to ‘warble’ instead of sounding a clear, steady tone. It was like there was some sort of frequency shift occurring, resulting in a noticeable distortion, probably a beat-frequency. She asked if the beep was high-pitched or low-pitched. It is high-pitched. She said, “Oh, yes. These units shift the higher frequencies down so you can hear them better.”

DOH! **FACEPALM**

I really wish I could find an audiologist who was also a musician. A musician would have known immediately what the problem was. This is something I teach to all of my beginning students, about the time when I explain to them why the process of tuning in fifths by playing two strings at once is the fastest, easiest, and most accurate way to tune the instrument because of the beat frequencies in the upper harmonics.

I explained to her about using beat frequencies in the upper harmonics on a violin to accurately adjust pitch — when those harmonics “beat” it means you are out of tune. All good violinists (and just about every other kind of musician) use ‘ring’ and ‘beat’ frequencies to stay in precise tune, either consciously or subconsciously. Since the hearing aids caused pretty much everything in the upper harmonics to beat, I was subconsciously (and unsuccessfully) trying to adjust. Net result, I was confused and playing out of tune. It’s really hard to even express just how frustrating that was.

She removed the frequency-shift program. I gave them a try this evening, and I noted that the problem was still there, but not quite as bad. I will be going back in two weeks, and next time, I’m taking my violin with me. Maybe this time I can get everything adjusted to my liking — or at least closer!

Postscript: For those of you breathlessly awaiting the start of my sweepstakes, I have picked out the prizes, and I am getting things ready. But I probably won’t have time to get everything ready until after Thanksgiving.