Parent, Pupil & Teacher Sessions

Since April 2007, we’ve hosted collective training workshops with the Johannesburg Youth Orchestra Company and others — bringing together parents, pupils, and teachers to explore what makes an instrument easy to play, beautiful to hear, and inspiring to practice on.

These sessions grew from close observation: watching teachers struggle to help pupils produce a good sound or stay inspired when the instrument itself resisted them. We realised that progress depends not only on effort or talent, but on an instrument that invites music to happen.

To achieve this, we began questioning traditional “recipes” in violin making, experimenting beyond convention. This curiosity led to the development of the Svencino Harmonic Tailpiece, inspired by the harp and bridge geometry of the piano — designed to enhance harmonic response and resonance. A small innovation born not from theory, but from listening.

None of this would have been possible without the collaboration and trust of our clients, teachers, and engineers. Many of these engineers, guided by their own fascination with sound, have helped us refine our ideas far beyond the workshop bench.

As Albert Einstein wrote,

“The technician who has learned to master the technical aspects of his craft must then forget them — only then does he become the artist of his field.”
“Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and desires… there we enter the realm of art and science.”

These words capture the heart of our approach. The violin maker alone remains a technician; but through collaboration, empathy, and curiosity, technique becomes art.

What We Explore

• The importance of Setup & Regulation — how it shapes sound and playability.

• Understanding each component — nut, bridge, fingerboard, and pegs — and how they influence tone and technique.

• Recognising problems early: open seams, slipping pegs, warped bridges.

• Maintenance and tuning habits that protect the instrument (and build confidence in young players).

• Why the bow — the true Sonic Wand — is often more important than the instrument itself.

Where We’ve Held Workshops

Gauteng: Pridwin Primary (Rosebank), WITS, Regina Mundi (Soweto), Sci-Bono (CBD), Pretoria
Free State & Northern Cape: UFS Odion Hall, Mangaung Strings, Kimberley
Eastern & Western Cape: ECPO & Feather Market (Port Elizabeth), West Coast Music Academy (Hopefield), Hugo Lambrechts Music Centre

What We’ve Learned

When pupils, parents, and teachers discover together how an instrument works — its structure, sensitivities, and sound — learning becomes shared, integrated, and joyful.
They begin to hear differently, to notice when something sounds snaaks, and to understand why.

For us, that is where craft, science, and art coalesce — at the meeting point between observation and imagination, between structure and soul.

As Maurice Ravel described his own creative process:

“In my work of composition I find a long period of conscious gestation necessary… I may thus be occupied for years without writing a single note — after which the writing goes relatively rapidly; but there is still much time to be spent in eliminating everything that might be regarded as superfluous, in order to realize as completely as possible the longed-for final clarity.”

In the same way, our work — with sound, material, and community — evolves through long observation, sudden clarity, and constant refinement.
It is the patient art of listening: to wood, to resonance, and to the people who give music its meaning.