Hupfeld Phonoliszt-Violina 2

Fully restored Hupfeld Phonoliszt-Violina plays Nocturne Op. 9, No. 2 in E flat major. Andante by Fréderic Chopin.
Restoration done by Fred Bernouw restorations in The Netherlands.

[@musical.0uija]

This is the best sounding violina I have ever heard. It's actually enjoyable and not overly robotic sounding.

[@RockStarOscarStern634]

@Matteo Juan Another cool thing is that the Violins (basically Stradivarius copies) have Guitar Style Machine Heads which make tuning easier. If you were to put Guitar Style Machine Heads on a conventional Acoustic or Electric Violin then you might pay tribute to the Phonolist Violina.

[@WelteMax]

Martin, This instrument is a full copy of an original Violina. It was made in the factory of Sigfried Wendel in Rüdesheim am Rein, Germany. De violins are factory violins. They are not bad at all, but indeed if you find three Stradivarius violins with about the same character it would indeed improve the sound even more!=)

[@rodrigonh]

I bet a Stradivarius owner is not courageous enough to insert his violin in this scary machine!! :p

[@RockStarOscarStern634]

@@rodrigonh It's not so scary plus it'll get harmless geared tuners. The guitar style machine heads really help with tuning.

[@martinadler73]

A wonderful restoration job! Great that some of these instruments still exist.

[@talmadge1926]

I recently read that there are about 60 of these still in existence. A fully restored model like this is/was for sale on an antiques site. Pricetag $885,000.

[@fiandrhi]

Rarely do I have a musical experience with machines such as this, but I found this very musical. Thank you.

[@nosidamXlynax]

this is so very extraordinarily beautiful and an absolute true marvel of engineering especially for it's time. ^_^

[@beniiboi69]

thats so fcking mindlowing this machine was build over 100 years ago

[@LaurasLastDitch]

This sounds unbelievably good, and it's so neat to watch!

[@nym_]

I don't recall ever hearing this Chopin piece. Beautiful, it makes me feel like I'm in a studio ghibli film--particularly reminds me of Howl's Moving Castle. :)

[@juliantotriwijaya9208]

when old robot plays better than the modern one, show this to TwoSetViolin XD

[@pyza4742]

I was literally thinking the same thing 😂 i wish they did a video on it honestly.

[@DeadKoby]

Electro mechanical music is so cool. I can't hear this song without thinking of the first scene from the movie "Bad Santa"

[@georginathompson3788]

When you think about it, the inventor of this machine is playing his music and instrument live, long after his death.

[@maroonrangoon]

an absolute wonder. thank you for sharing!

[@sophias3508]

This is incredible! I wish more people knew about it. How fascinating, 100 years ago was made yet its like some machines of today would have made.

[@RockStarOscarStern634]

What's super cool is that the Violins have Geared Tuners like a Guitar which means it's easier to tune. If you were to install Guitar Style Violin machine heads on a conventional Acoustic or Electric Violin, Viola, or Cello you could pay tribute to the iconic Hupfeld Phonolist Violina.

[@sophias3508]

@@RockStarOscarStern634 Wow that's so cool

[@fabiosci6981]

Emocionante ver a dedicação do construtor do instrumento, ainda mais executando uma obra particularmente repleta de saudade.

[@grandcarriage1]

So. 3 violins, each playing one string. No violin playing the G string, then? Still, this was fabulous (If not my favorite song, oh well). I LOVED the runs performed between instruments. How very cool.

[@thorwotan7794]

wow, this awesome mechanics !

[@jimtaylor294]

A very moving rendition. This musical peice is always poigniant to me when on violin, but this is particularly so, albeit in a way I can't wholly discribe.

[@dodiswatchbobobo]

See, this is how it should sound. The museums never keep their mechanisms as finely tuned as they should be.

[@dennisspinkshappyforbusker2523]

Marvelous creation of a mechanical engineering instrument!..

[@ericoschmitt]

Amazing how it even changes bow speed. But I couldn't understand how it does the vibrato. And is the violin section playable by a musician? Is there a second keyboard? Does it plays with dynamics? Any videos of live playing?

[@andrewbarrett1537]

In this, the violins are not hand-playable by a musician via a keyboard. They did make a theatre model Phonoliszt-Violina (of which one exists in Switzerland) but I doubt that one allows people to play the violins either; it just had a lower profile to fit under the movie screen (the violins are in a side cabinet next to the piano, like a photoplayer). However, Mills did make a model of Violano-Virtuoso called the "Mills Melody Violins" (not sure it had a piano) which had four violins in a long low cabinet, with two keyboards and three foot pedals. According to Mr. Herbert S. Mills himself, only about a dozen were ever built and none are known to exist today. One custom Mills Double Violano-Virtuoso or "DeLuxe" model (with two violins and piano) was specially built with a double keyboard to allow for hand playing of the violins and piano... the double keyboard folded away into the lower section of the cabinet when not in use. This piano is depicted in the Mills section of "the Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments" by Q. David Bowers (Vestal Press, 1972, found in most large English language libraries), when it was owned by a San Francisco collector circa 1960s/70s, but its current ownership is unknown. In addition to that, Mills sold a few Violano violin assemblies to be installed as part of pipe organs, of which I think one still exists in the USA as part of a large residence pipe organ, and might be restored soon. THAT would be really cool, to play the organ and flip a stoptab and suddenly you're playing a real violin!

[@andrewbarrett1537]

As far as I know, in this instrument, the vertical metal rod located just to the left of the fingerboard on the violin is the tremolo/vibrato rod, which causes the entire violin to shake (side to side on a pivot, maybe?), on cue from a pneumatic located probably with the finger pneumatics. The rod runs down to a regular finger-type lever, which is at the very top of the assembly of the main finger levers. If you pause the video looking at the violins, and look carefully, you'll see what I mean. The right-most, or maybe second to right, hole on the tracker bar controls vibrato and it is single stroke so one hole punch = one shake of the violin... thus the arranger can vary the speed of vibrato / tremolo to sound more realistic and be more emotionally sympathetic to the music.

[@PatrickLienCT]

Érico Schmitt There is a lever that is clamped onto the tailpiece. To effect the vibrato, the lever is moved, which changes the tension on the strings. This is how the machine does vibrato.

[@andrewbarrett1537]

@@PatrickLienCT Patrick is right everybody. Look at the tailpiece (upper end, in this case) of the violin, as it is being played. You can see the lever move and the tailpiece shake, very clearly.

[@andrewbarrett1537]

It is playing with dynamics... there are four (I think) fixed bow speeds and bow pressure settings... and I think they can be gone to quickly or slowly, so one can get sudden increases / decreases in volume or gradual ones. Pretty good for 1909 :)

[@RockStarOscarStern634]

This is arranged by Sarasate

[@NXTIMEPIUSM5]

1:32 I love this moment

[@mkenaa]

fascinating

[@arburo1]

A marvellous restoration and super sound. However, one significant question. If this is a recent reproduction and not an original instrument, why did it need restoring so soon after being built?

[@WelteMax]

arburo1 Well 1st of all the original reproduction had a awful lot of mistakes in it. So it played very very bad=( 2nd it was shipped to America, in America it lost some parts and had some awful work done on it. And 3rd it was send back to Europe, bought by someone who wanted it to play superb and restoring was the only option. =)

[@martinadler73]

A question: Are these violins of high quality (I am not sure about it), or would it be possible to improve the sound even more by using higher quality violins?

[@user-fr5zw7sv6z]

I think, this machine plays as good as a mechanical violin could!

[@Mike77154]

They still constructing this machines? Can be maked One of these machines for midi playing? As a musical producer this machines can be verte usefull

[@WaffleStaffel]

Is that throbbing bass sound which appears when the switch is flipped on part of the bellows/drive or is it from a neighbors stereo?

[@tarstarkusz]

I hope you are teaching someone how to maintain and repair this thing. This thing probably has 10k moving parts, all needing grease. All needing to be disassembled, cleaned, fine tuning and re-greased.

[@billhall1983]

Amazing

[@JokeriPokeri17]

This is real genius and piece of history, unlike that obnoxious scandinavian who thinks his plywood and lego made metal ball machine is the most advanced musical machine in the history.

[@jacktrablinski1291]

agreed, he drives me crazy, his machine doesn’t even actually work, and it looks and sounds ugly. this is a mechanical marvel, one of the most advanced and elegant things ever created in the musical world!

[@andrewbarrett1537]

I think Martin deserves some credit. His machine is not designed just to play music, but also entertain people visually and aesthetically, hence all the marbles and all the extra planning. Due to the marbles, more elements of chance are introduced into its playback than into a machine such as this which has, for example fingers carefully positioned above the violin strings to (when in adjustment and in tune) always fret the correct notes of the strings; or like most other automatic percussion instruments (glockenspiels, xylophones etc in orchestrions, band organs, photoplayers, theatre pipe organs etc) which have their mallets positioned right over the instrument to strike it reliably and consistently when actuated. Martin trying to use marbles to do the same thing (play tuned bars), as reliably as an entire set of carefully-positioned mallets, creates an entirely new set of engineering hurdles not anticipated by the original designers of the old instruments, although ones which I think they would also have beautifully surmounted if there had been a market for such a thing once upon a time. So I don't get the impression he is of the impression that his own instrument is 'the best', but rather that he's been obsessively working on it so 1. it will not break down on a world tour under hard use, but remain reliable; and 2. try to engineer things in novel ways using current technology, to keep it 'drool-worthy' for engineers. I think his visits to Museum Speelklok in Utrecht, Netherlands and Siegfried's Mechanisches Musikkabinett Museum in Rudesheim, Germany, both on his YT channel, show how correctly humbled he (and viewers) are from these past masterpieces by the past masters. Part of the reason he threw out some of his original design ideas and redid things WAS in reaction to viewing these mechanical music masterpieces, as he realized he needed to 'up his game' to get anywhere near in league with the original creators. I can see how it might be infuriating watching him take so long to develop this thing, but #1 he's not copying a past instrument but making a new one, so has to make it all up from his head, although borrowing mechanical/design ideas from various places; and #2 he's such a perfectionist that he doesn't want it to fail, but to operate reliably, which given the potential error/randomness in anything involving bouncing/dropping marbles, is a tall order even if millions were poured into the project and an entire team set to work developing it (actually, he DOES have a team helping him construct it, which I believe has actually sped up the process). I can see that to someone who is not as intense and driven as he is, how his relentless perfectionism can be a deterrent as well as make some of his episodes less watchable for some people. But I hope that once the machine is totally completed, people have respect for him and the final product, as they did for his shaky and unreliable (but very cool and very fun) original.

[@sammurabi4743]

Why are you so salty toward Martin? He's never claimed the Marble Machine to be the most advanced music machine. He's actually pretty open and honest about its cobbled aesthetics and many mechanical issues. Also, he has a whole video series where he goes around Europe showcasing various unique historical orchestrions and mechanical instruments. The first video is literally all about the Hupfield Violinas. Where do you think he got the idea for the marble machine from?

[@nancyymttz]

What happens when the strings go out of tune

[@nielsberkers]

when that happens...... welll... it sounds out of tune until you tune it. very realistic indeed

[@RockStarOscarStern634]

@@nielsberkers That's not really the case cause these Violins have "Easy Tune Machine Heads" basically an improved version of the Guitar style Violin tuning keys.

[@nielsberkers]

It is still a fact that they need to be tuned regularly, regardless if it is easy or difficult to do so

[@RockStarOscarStern634]

@@nielsberkers Of course w/ Helicore Strings they might hold tune more.

[@RockStarOscarStern634]

@@nielsberkers The Guitar Style Tuning Machines do help with tuning it up cause they never slip.

[@RockStarOscarStern634]

@UCfOgpdcFmblCdSMXXlyquzQ Hopefully you can see that these Violin have Guitar style machine heads it makes them easier to tune up.

[@deutscheumwelthilfe3642]

Wo liegt denn - wenn mir die Frage gestattet ist - der Preis für ein solches in Perfektion nachgebautes Instrument ungefähr?

[@Martins.Historische.Tontraeger]

Ich denke das kann keiner mehr bauen. Ich hörte von einem Preisen für das Instrument bis zu 1 Million Euro im restaurierten Zustand.

[@nielsberkers]

In der Vergangenheit wurden für diese Instrumente Preise in Höhe von 1 Million Dollar gezahlt, zumindest für die Originale. Diese Preise werden nicht mehr erreicht. 400000 bis 600000 für ein originales Hupfeld ist realistischer denke ich. für eine Kopie wird es die Hälfte sein? das ist was ich denke. Ich weiß es nicht genau, weil ich sie bis jetzt nie kaufe

[@controversy4987]

Opus 9 no 2, timing is messed up a bit dynamics are not great. Good for a self playing machine, wow.

[@Ichigo_Keba]

how do they rosin the bow

[@WelteMax]

King Punchwood originally, there is a pneumatic at the back of the instrument ( inside the bow ). Then the most eight button in the Piano controls that pneumatic. However on all Violina’s ( that sounds like there are stil a lot of then. Sadly about 60-70 originals only survive today ). Is this option deactivated. The reason is very simple: if something goes wrong and there is no block of rosin in the contraption anymore, the “arm” which approaches the bow Wil now(when it goes without rosin for example) just lock on in to the delicate horsehair of your bow and it will rip it apart in bits. This is a very expensive job to do, hence we rosin the bow by hand :)

[@visevrou35]

Ceux qui ont construit cet appareil étaient de génis

[@phwbooth]

Interesting. Tempi are a little odd, though.

[@347nian]

😊

[@carlotiburone4649]

CHOPIN -. Nocturne. - Opus 9...- 2

[@brunohoffman295]

how is the control reel score created?

[@themagicboy6548]

Wait, the roll goes bottom to top?

[@ilovecokezeroandmorbius]

yeah, I think in one of the comments on the old video, someone explains why. Something to do with how the germans designed it :b

[@andrewbarrett1537]

Most pre-WWI-designed/introduced Hupfeld instruments have the roll going from bottom to top. Not only the Phonoliszt-Violina, but also the Phonoliszt expression piano; DEA reproducing piano (I *think*); Helios orchestrions; Clavitist-Universal pianos and orchestrions, and probably other models / roll types I'm forgetting. This is for the earlier-introduced (generally pre-WWI) models with Hupfeld's own special tracker bar hole spacing, and often a tracker bar with 77 holes in it (more for the DEA model). The later-introduced Hupfeld models such as the Animatic-Clavitist pianos and orchestrions; Sinfonie-Jazz orchesrion; Phonoliszt-Violina-Orchestra (with pipes and drums in addition to piano and violins); Triphonola reproducing piano; and a few others, which share the common 88-hole (or in their case, 98-hole) tracker bar, spaced 9 holes per inch, and all being compatible with standard 88-note player piano rolls as well, have the roll going from top to bottom, as usual for other makes and models of player piano that are also 88-note compatible.

[@BOHEMIANMEX]

One of those was sell by 658,000 us dollar!

[@WelteMax]

BOHEMIANMEX yes. That particular example what a special exhibition unique case design. A one off! That's why that one was that expensive. Still a "normal" original Phonoliszt - Violina Model A / B will still set you back a 400-500.000€ lol

[@BOHEMIANMEX]

WelteMax thank you very much for reply, Im very delighted to see this art, regards from Mexico!

[@dzanc]

Ok but can it do 'pizzicato'?

[@robfriedrich2822]

With one more violin and picks.... The question would be, could it fit on the paper strip

[@diabrion]

name of this melody... please

[@chloelau8291]

Saul Diaz Briones its on the description

[@diabrion]

Chloe Lau thanks, it,'s true...

[@monarkautofocus]

👍👍👍👏👏👏 LIKE Nº 601

[@chinchinlinlin9992]

Now play all 24 Paganini caprices

[@arvarat]

BUT, I have a question. How this machine make p pp mp mf f ff ff and stuff like this ???

[@WelteMax]

Very good question! It’s had various pneumatic mechanical smart stuff to make that happen. It’s can vary the loudness of the piano by a few different degrees and the violin bow can rotate faster(FFF) and slower (PPP) and crescendos and de crescendos in between. Also it automatically varies the violin pressure with which the violins are pressed Shiah’s the bow. It’s a VERY clever pneumatic computer.

[@nosidamXlynax]

​@@WelteMaxthis is was an extraordinary orchestral machine. ^.^

[@nouveaualyon]

Heureusement qu’on n’utilise plus cette machine…

[@Malarkeydo]

:-o

[@petroskefallinos8735]

Amazing machine but the fact is that especially if you put it to play classical music the human factor is missing....I don't like how it sounds its not touching at all.

[@andrewbarrett1537]

Well, that's always a matter of opinion, and it will never sound QUITE like a person, but for 1910 technology I think it plays pretty well :) Also, the roll might be a bit at the wrong speed. In order to get the music to sound right (and the tremolo), the tempo lever has to be set at JUST the right speed (in the "sweet spot"). I've found this for hand played player piano rolls too- when some are set at JUST the right tempo, they magically "spring to life" and sound noticeably less mechanical.

[@petroskefallinos8735]

In that case I think my opinion is also a fact. Don't get me wrong I admire this machine very much! its mesmerising to watch!

[@andrewbarrett1537]

Well I agree with you that the relatively simple expression system in this (circa 1909) can't possibly reproduce all the nuances of a real violinist... but it's still pretty good and amazing for the time period. I'm glad you like the machine! However, one thing that amazes me is the (anonymous to me) PERSON who arranged the music rolls (a machine did not make the roll arrangements after all, although a mechanical perforator did mechanically reproduce many commercial copies of them from a single master roll)... if you listen you can hear _their_ soul and personal expression ideas in the very specific and unique things they coded for this machine to play on those tunes, and those ideas are forever locked in paper, a little bit like when a good violinist makes a digital recording and the recording is locked in pits on the underside of a CD.

[@CIorox_BIeach]

I'm not a big fan of classical because there's no life in it anywhere. They all sound like machines. Just my opinion.

[@andrewbarrett1537]

@@CIorox_BIeach I agree with you about CERTAIN more recent (say post-WWII) classical artists. _Some_ leave me cold and their performances are too clinical. This is part of why I love to listen to 100+ year old audio recordings of original classical greats on many instruments (piano, violin, voice, and more) as they often have so much LIFE in their playing and extra expression what with the strong rubato etc that it's marvelous. I think the more recent classical musicians certainly have their strengths etc but the philosophy of interpreting/expressing the music has changed, as certainly it must have several times in the centuries before recording was invented. Unfortunately by making too many aspects of classical music a 'contest', or making being a classical musician a 'status symbol' but in a sort of non-musical way, I think that some mentalities make the resulting performance of a given piece less enjoyable, since it's less about someone naturally LIKING and FEELING that tune and expressing themselves through it, but more like they HAVE to do it, or have a DUTY towards it. While a musician's duty should always be towards respecting the original composer, in my opinion, that does still leave plenty of room for self-expression and different personal versions. Just my 2c.