Carleen Hutchins, violin history during the 1960s - 70s

During the 1960s and 70s, Carleen Hutchins and her associates developed a ‘concert violin’, with a longer, revamped body and larger f-holes, and a string octet, compromising mathematical, acoustical and violin-making principles to produce instruments in different frequency ranges that possess the dynamic power and timbre of the violin family. These instruments range from the contrabass violin (body length 130 cm, tuned E'–A'–D'–G) to the small treble (or ‘sopranino’) violin (tuned an octave above the normal violin).

Experiments with building electric instruments based on the violin family, often with solid bodies and amplified usually by means of one or more sets of electromagnetic pickups or contact microphones , have continued since the 1920s.

The kit-like Raad violin was developed in the late 1970s to dispense with the earlier primitive arrangement of surface pickups and to cultivate a more sophisticated sound. By allowing the instrument's signal to be amplified, modified or altered through changes in frequency response, rapid changes in amplitude, harmonic alteration (of overtones), echo and reverberation effects, and distortion, it has served a wide range of classical and popular musical styles.

 

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