Memory of the summer 1985

Long time no seeing, everybody!
Sorry for a long time no update. Lately, I was doing my new blog on yahoo Japan, so I couldn’t take care of this blog.

But I thought that maybe I can’t upload articles about making violin everyday, but as long as if there was somebody visiting this blog I wanna share something. Lately my big hobbies are playing violin and watercolor painting. Oh, by the way I already finished to make my 4th violin the other day. Sorry I didn’t show much part of making that.

(After finishing vurnish)

Now I play mostly this violin. The sound is not perfect, of course it’s still really young flesh violin, but my violin teacher confirmed it will improve for sure if I continue playing it. For the moment I’m not satisfied about the sound, but one day I’ll show how it sounds on this blog (it’ll be my poor playing though!! Hehehe!)


Anyway, what I want to share on this blog with you guys is my hobby. And I want you guys to see my watercolor paintings too. I want to hear the comments - not criticizing- from people all over the world! If you like my paintings, pls tell me your feeling, I’ll be so glad!!


Well, which one should I show you as a first painting? Hmmm, OK, I’ll show you the latest one which I finished 1week ago.


Memory of the summer 1985

When I was a kid, my parents were both working, so I had to go to the afterschool school which take care of kids like me. In this special school, they had summer camp every year, and I loved to go the camping with my friends.
Since I grew up in the city area of Japan, I loved going to nature side. But great time passes so quick. I always missed this special time. This painting is showing when I was going back to home with my Mom by the small train. This is based on my memory of the summer 1985. Do you have this kind of memory?

Playing on Masakichi Suzuki No.6

I received Masakichi No.6 a couple of days later. This violin seemed really well made compared to other 2 Masakichis.
The back was really highly flamed, neck, ribs too.
Top was really nice spruce, (but it’s probably Japanese wood. Since at the beginning of Suzuki violin, they used Japanese materials for almost all of their products. Unfortunately, Japanese materials are not so high quality compared to European materials, from the point of sound.) .
Comparing F-holes to other violins, this one has really nice shape and well finished.

And neck scroll. It’s really well balanced, and perfect shape.
Considering these points, I thought this was handmade by a well-experienced craftsman.

（figure 1: try to put new strings on it ）

（F-hose is also well finished, right?）

How was the sound? Yes, it was preeeety good.
I’d never had such nice sound before. Treble sound was easy to play and beautiful, lower sound was like a human bass voice.
I don’t know how to tell, it’s difficult to describe sound by words.^^;) especially in English.
Anyway, it was the best sound for me at that time, I was crazy about that violin. I played all the time. I was practicing Concerto No.3 of F.Seitz at that time, I felt "Waaah, I became so good at playing this tune!" Hehehe, of course it was a kind of silly confidence.
But few weeks later, I noticed something. It makes a weird noise sometimes.
Like a metallic sound, like electric guitar sound. Why???
Even though I play classical violin, why it makes sound of hard rock? ^^;)
I noticed it’s when I play double string sound. (I don’t know how to say that, is it correct? )
When I play 2 strings at the same time, the vibration of violin is huge.
So it might have been some cracks at somewhere. But I couldn’t find at all.
It was a mystery…

The third Masakichi Suzuki

April 2006
At that time, I had already 2 Masakichi Suzuki violins.
It was supposed to be enough for one player, but one day I found a great look Masakichi violin on the net-auction again!
It was obviously Masakichi suzuki’s label, but seller seemed she hadn’t noticed it.
And other bidders either. And label was showing its No. 6 looked like handwriting.

(but we can't see the number in this picture, ^^;) sorry)

About Masakichi Suzuki violin, handwritten number is really rare, and it was supposed to be especially high-grade model.
But I don’t know this violin is really equivalent to the special grade yet.
I’m not a specialist of this kind of violin. I know few maniac people in Japan though ^^;)
They seem they know everything about Masakichi violin.
It seemed more valuable than the price for me. It was 300$ at that moment.
“No one seemed not noticing this great violin, it should come to my place!”

So, I bought it. Hehehe, I know, it’s pretty useless to buy so many violins.
Especially, player is just one person, me. Of course I can’t play so many violins.
But just by curios, how many violins I had at that time? Let’s see.

1. The first violin, which is made in California
2. Masakichi Suzuki No.A
3. M.Suzuki No.3010
4. my handmade 1st violin(which was under building)
5. and, this M.Suzuki violin No.6

Alalala… I had so many violins already. It is obviously too much for one beginner^^;)

Notification

Recently, I wrote about my painting, pet, etc.
Since I wrote many kinds of things, the main theme of this blog is little bit less clear.
So I started other web cite which is about mostly watercolor painting.
If you’re interested in my paintings, pls visit this web cite.
www.atelier-fujino.com

For the moment there’s just Japanese version for this cite, but I’m building English version too.
So pls wait for that.(Of course you can visit even now, we actually don’t need a word for watching pictures)

From now on I’m going to put topics only about violins, music stuffs on
this blog. (^^)

curving inside of back

I'm curving inside of the back since last week. (^^)

Little by little, I'm curving. It's becoming like a violin, right?

I’m curving inside for 2 weeks, but it’s still 50% done, maybe. It weighs 169g now.

I hope it will lose 50g more! Fooooouuu(sigh), it’s tiring. ^^;)

But it’s also interesting part, it feels this is the most popular violin making scene.
Recently my making violin is proceeding slowly though, please keep checking.(^^)

After arching

I haven’t updated this blog for a while, sorry about it ^^;)
Recently I was really busy with my work. Today, I’m gonna show you my recent work of making violin(my 4th violin).
How is making the violin’s back now? After I started making the arch of back, it took much time. Since I wanted to make precisely same arch than Stradivari’s violin, I took much time. But in some parts, arching guide didn’t match to my back. I wonder how much can we trust the arch from the poster(the Strad)?
(Because this time, I noticed few of arches’ lines were partly omitted in the poster.) So sometime I had to guess the lines from that poster. ~~;) Hmmm.
It’s kind of dangerous to follow 100% to the poster, isn’t it?

Anyway, finally finished the arching!! Fiouuu! It was already tiring though! For the moment, this back weighs 299g. It
’s little bit heavier than usual material. Since my 3rd violin guarneri model had 270g at this point. I wish I can make it lighter. Hopefully, final weight should be less than 120g. Even pretty thick guarneri model was 119g, so I want to make it less than 115g! (Am I hoping too much? ^^;) But violin should be lighter, heavy instrument makes us really tired easily.


Before curving inside, I've made many holes to guide curving. This is Henry Strobel method.(^^)
I started to curve inside of back, finally! ^^)

(I feel this time, it’s really taking much time. But it’s ok, it’s just for me, I don’t have to hurry.)

Curving inside with chisel, curving knife…mostly curving knife.　And even inside, it’s still tough to curve. Maple is really hard! My hands hurt, and even my back has muscle ache! Hehehe!

The main roll

You probably know we have a bulldog since 2month ago. He is a mixture of French and English bulldog. This kind of mix is pretty rare, here in Japan. His name is Loppete(means woes in French )
Yesterday I got a phone call from a dog-trainer who taught us a month ago how to educate puppy. She said,
“Don’t you want to let Lopette play in a movie?”
Wao, this is really sudden opportunity. Wahat happened? She said,
“The film making company is looking for a French bulldog which has exactly same black and white part on a face like Lopette.”
But our dog is a half French bulldog. According to her, it’s still rare to find this kind of face, so there’s much chance. OK, it looks funny, why not? Let’s try this. She said,
“This film is based on a Manga which is about French bulldog and a girl. The schedule of this film making is pretty tight. They are going to have an audition from tomorrow, and they’ll start to film from 30th June. So could you go to show your dog to them tomorrow or Saturday?”
OK, I decided to go to there on Saturday.

（He has Japanese festival Kimono.）

Today’s afternoon. She called me again.
“I’m so sorry. They decided to film with other company’s dog. Which has exactly same color as a character in the Manga. Sorry, even though you decided to go to the audition…”
Hehehe… it’s too bad Lopette. You didn’t have even a chance to attend the audition. Poor Lopette. He might have had a chance to become a movie star though! ^^;)
Even though he lost his chance, he is still our own movie star!!