In Kaohsiung City, besides music contests, arts performances and festivals, several other music-related industries are also practiced actively over the past decade. Within these, string music instruments making industry and music therapist are under their pre-developing stage and will probably provide music learners and musicians more selections for their future careers.

 

4-1 Luthiers

Tiso Musica, an international string music instruments selling company, was founded in 1976. It sells a variety of fiddles and accessories and their “shoulder rest” even obtains U.S. patent right. The owner of the company, Mr. Huang, Zhi-Yin, is also a violinist and a music teacher explained to us in details of the violin making process and interesting stories of fiddle selling over the past decades during our in person interview with him. He also showed us the small “string instrument Doctor workshop” in his store with us, allowed us to take photos of several high quality and prices violins, as well as shared with us his perspectives of the string instrument making industry in Taiwan nowadays and the future opportunities.

 

 

• Learn how to make a violin Mr. Huang owns the Tido Musica and lets her older daughter go to Italy to study violin making. Violins made in Italy are considered one of the top nudge violins in the world because violin making in Italy not only requires high quality and great appearance of the violin but also requires its maker learn the arts and appreciation of the music. Therefore, before learning the technical techniques on making a violin, students have to learn the Italian language, its culture and history. After that, students need to internalize the appreciation of beauty into themselves, understand different kinds of woods and comprehend their “wood-features” and their “sound-features” and then they can start learning how to make a violin after 5 years of learning the things above.

 

• String Music Instrument Making Industry in Taiwan String music instrument making is not a popular industry in Taiwan for the following reasons: (1) Very rare music instrument buyers will buy a violin from Taiwanese luthiers and (2) buyers prefer buying violins made in Italy or other European countries. As a result, Taiwanese luthiers often switch their career focus into fiddles selling and fixing or they choose to work in mainland China. Comparing to Italy, Germany and the European fiddles making countries, Taiwan does not have the competitiveness on string music instrument making industry. If comparing on the prices of fiddles, violins made in China are often the cheapest. Thus, we are not capable to compare with them using low-price marketing policy. Therefore, it is very limited in this industry. Perhaps the only way that I can think of now is: violin learners keep winning in international competitions and that will trigger more people want to learn how to play the violin or even want to study abroad majoring in string music instrument making.