A Silky Solution

After much studying and experimentation, scientists have found a way to make violin strings out of spider silk.  This link takes you to the entire article and also lets you preview the a sampling played on the strings. It could have been the recording quality, but the tone sounded mellow and soft to me, without the precision of traditional strings but with a sound of its own that was really unique.  I'd love to hear a quartet to get a sense of what it sounds multiplied across several instruments.

For each string, Dr Osaki twisted between 3,000 and 5,000 individual strands of silk in one direction to form a bundle. The strings were then prepared from three of these bundles twisted together in the opposite direction.

He then set about measuring their tensile strength - a critical factor for violinists wishing to avoid breaking a string in the midst of a concerto.

The spider-silk strings withstood less tension before breaking than a traditional but rarely used gut string, but more than an aluminium-coated, nylon-core string.

A closer study using an electron microscope showed that, while the strings themselves were perfectly round, in cross-section the strands had been compressed into a range of different shapes that all fit snugly together, leaving no space between them.

Dr Osaki suggests that it is this feature of the strings that lends them their strength and, crucially, their unique tone.

"Several professional violinists reported that spider strings... generated a preferable timbre, being able to create a new music," he wrote.

This also gives us insight into how we can create sounds, change a musical standard and enjoy something new while upholding tradition.  Spider silk is an amazing thing, but I'd have never thought to try it for a stringed instrument.  Strings must be so perfectly crafted, so uniform to hold the tension required to get the right sounds.  I thought spider silk would stretch too much and refuse to stay in tune.

I still maintain my "the only good spider is a dead spider" standards, but at least we can get some use out of the nasty little critters.