How to predict the sound produced by a tonewood block once carved into the shape of a violin plate? What is the best shape for the best sound? Artificial intelligence offers answers to these questions. These are the conclusions that researchers of the Musical Acoustics Lab of Politecnico di Milano presented in a study that was recently published in Scientific Reports. In the article "A Data-Driven Approach to Violinmaking," the Chilean physicist and luthier Sebastian Gonzalez (post-doc researcher) and the professional mandolin player Davide Salvi (Ph.D. student) show how a simple and effective neural network is able to predict the vibrational be-havior of violin plates.

IMAGE: The historical drawing attributed to the workshop of Enrico Ceruti that inspired the outline parameterization (a) and the geometric modeling adopted in the work (b). How to predict the sound produced by a tonewood block once carved into the shape of a violin plate? What is the best shape for the best sound? These are the conclusions that researchers of the Musical Acoustics Lab of Politecnico di Milano presented in a study that was recently published in Scientific Reports. In the article "A Data-Driven Approach to Violinmaking" the Chilean physicist and luthier Sebastian Gonzalez (post-doc researcher) and the professional mandolin player Davide Salvi (PhD student) show how a simple and effective neural network is able to predict the vibrational be-havior of violin plates.

In the article "A Data-Driven Approach to Violinmaking," the Chilean physicist and luthier Sebastian Gonzalez (post-doc researcher) and the professional mandolin player Davide Salvi (Ph.D. student) show how a simple and effective neural network is able to predict the vibrational be-havior of violin plates. The ability to predict the sound of a violin design, can truly be a game changer for violin makers, as not only will it help them do better than the'grand masters,' but it will also help them explore the potential of new designs and materials. Politecnico di Milano researchers developed a model that describes the violin's outline as the conjunction of arcs of nine circles. Thanks to this representation and an efficient model of the curvature of the plate, based on the renowned'Messiah' violin by Stradivarius, researchers were able to draw a violin plate as a function of 35 parameters. By randomly changing such parameters, such as radii and center position of the circles, arching, thickness, mechanical characteristics of the wood, etc., they built a dataset of violins, which includes shapes that are very similar to those used in violin making, but also designs that had never been seen before.