The architecture of musical instruments

September 15, 2022 11:00 AM

“I never really knew what was going on inside. That was a realm reserved for the luthier. From time to time, while repairing an instrument, we would take a rare look inside, which was always an electrifying experience.”

The “Architecture in Music” series was born from this creative drive—a series of surprising photographs by Auckland photographer and cellist Charles Brooks that reveal the insides of pianos, flutes, violins and other instruments.

They are truly fascinating hidden worlds. They make us understand that sometimes a change of point of view or a new scale is enough to discover new beauties and wonders.

posted by Too-Ticky (19 comments total)

That's pretty cool. It reminds me of when I used to make trumpets, using a borescope to align the valves and remove burrs.
posted by 2N2222 at 11:06 AM on September 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'd totally live in that bass, especially now that the roof has been "shored up" within an inch of its life...does that count as earthquake-proofing?

(good grief, the top of that thing must have been absolutely splintered!)
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:34 AM on September 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

They look like sets from Star Wars or something.
posted by Jess the Mess at 11:46 AM on September 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

I remember this part of Elden Ring!
posted by Going To Maine at 11:55 AM on September 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

They look like sets from Star Wars or something.

Who knew that inside every stringed instrument is an apartment I can’t afford.
posted by mhoye at 12:04 PM on September 15, 2022 [14 favorites]

They look like sets from Star Wars or something.

"And now, your highness, we will discuss the location of your hidden rebel bass."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:29 PM on September 15, 2022 [30 favorites]

These photos would have been all but impossible even just twenty years ago, as the technique used to take them is called "focus stacking" and is the result of software combining the sharpest parts of dozens-to-hundreds of macro photographs, each focussed just a little bit further out than the next. (This is how you are these days getting extremely sharp photos of all of a bug rather than just a part of the eye or antenna or what-have you.)

The thing that makes these photos look like enormous architecture is very similar to the thing that makes "tilt-shift" photographs of life-sized places look like miniatures -- presenting an object with an unusual depth of field.

(A variation of focus stacking is used in astrophotography to help eliminate atmospheric distortion and sensor noise in the resulting stacked image.)
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:30 PM on September 15, 2022 [22 favorites]

First link shows cool pictures, you can't click to enlarge them though. Second link sells big prints. Hmmmm. Oh well, net gain.

Also, what instruments? I can tell some of them, but not all.
posted by Rich Smorgasbord at 1:39 PM on September 15, 2022

First link shows cool pictures, you can't click to enlarge them though.

Sorry about that; try here if you want.
https://www.architectureinmusic.com/pages/gallery
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:44 PM on September 15, 2022 [3 favorites]

That cello that was hit by a train looks like it came out okay. Of course, that's way back when cellos were crafted from steel and cement.
posted by not_on_display at 4:50 PM on September 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

Also, what instruments? I can tell some of them, but not all.

The print selling page has the instrument names.

These are amazing, found the wedding gift for a cello playing friend.
posted by calamari kid at 7:19 PM on September 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

way back when cellos were crafted from steel and cement

brutalist violin
posted by flabdablet at 10:49 PM on September 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

These are amazing!

Great to see the one of a Taylor GS Mini. We love ours.
posted by kmartino at 3:43 AM on September 16, 2022

>>They look like sets from Star Wars or something.

>"And now, your highness, we will discuss the location of your hidden rebel bass."
>posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:29 PM on September 15 [29 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]

... this is where we all say "eponysterical," right? Thx for that.
posted by adekllny at 12:45 PM on September 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

Given that infinite depth of field is what makes these work, I'm wondering whether the same thing could be achieved with much less tech using a pinhole camera and some very long exposure times.
posted by flabdablet at 2:20 PM on September 16, 2022

It would work to some degree, but the quality will be poor. The sharpness of the exposed image is gated by the size of the pinhole; so with a very small 0.2mm sized pinhole on a very generous 6x6cm sized negative you're still not going to get much more than ~200 lines of sharpness across the entire frame. None of the physics really works out for single-exposure photography at this scale. And would this pinhole camera with that film size even fit in those spaces?
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:55 PM on September 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

Just to be outrageous IF you drilled a say 1cm hole in one of these instruments and in that hole mounted a thin metal plate with a pinhole in it, and IF you could then get an excessive amount of light inside the instrument that is shielded from the outside, THEN in an extremely dark room the pinhole would project a high resolution and infinite depth-of-field image of the inside of the instrument on a distant white wall which you could then take a traditional photograph of. (Or use an enormous piece of film, e.g. the pinhole camera truck.)

The resolved detail of a pinhole camera is solely dictated by the ratio of the size of the pinhole and the size of the projection, so the larger the projection the sharper the image will be (and the dimmer it will be).

So, yeah, a pinhole would work, you'd just need to do it camera obscura style.
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:21 AM on September 17, 2022

IF you drilled a say 1cm hole in one of these instruments and in that hole mounted a thin metal plate with a pinhole in it

Some instruments have removable spikes or knobs in places that could make this achievable without damage.
posted by flabdablet at 12:12 PM on September 17, 2022

So, my husband and his friend take cool pictures of tiny mushrooms and itty bitty slime molds using focus stacking and it had literally. never. occurred. to me that you could use it for something else. I’m a music teacher, so this gave us something to talk about at dinner.

He suggested we start cutting holes in my middle schoolers’ instruments; I maintain if we wait long enough a student or two every year take care of that on their own.
posted by charmedimsure at 9:18 PM on September 17, 2022 [3 favorites]