How come a violin fits almost all the time (harmonically)

[swTB]

compared to say piano or guitar/bass.

I mean random notes, I sometimes just draw stuff into the midi track
and it fits way more often harmonically when i use a violin sound.

Any explanation?

[Gamma-UT]

Overtones. Guitars, particularly distorted guitars, have tons of overtones that are bound to clash with something.

Pianos have multiple strings per notes that are slightly detuned, so are again bound to clash with something. It's just a question of by how much.

This is also why you want to use open voicings for chords below middle C: to avoid bad overtone clashes.

Try a sine wave. No overtones. You pretty much have to land squarely on a minor second for it to sound off.

[VOODOO U]

I say give me overtones, give me off-timing, give me lousy singing and all sorts of clashing. That's real Rock N Roll. Alll else is irrelevant trash.

[swTB]

Thanks!

A useful answer.

open voicings

Gotta look that up..

[Harry_HH]

Overtones. Guitars, particularly distorted guitars, have tons of overtones that are bound to clash with something.

Pianos have multiple strings per notes that are slightly detuned, so are again bound to clash with something. It's just a question of by how much.

This is also why you want to use open voicings for chords below middle C: to avoid bad overtone clashes.

Try a sine wave. No overtones. You pretty much have to land squarely on a minor second for it to sound off.

This explanation is just a half-truth: yes, instrument overtones make the succesful blending of several instrument challengin.

But the OP asked why ”the violin fits, even when playing random notes, I sometimes just draw stuff into the midi track”.

I.e. the OP asked why the violin playing (sound) is insensitive for the wrong notes [notes which are out of the harmonic context of the other sounds (instruments) playing at the same time].

In my opinion the wrong playing is the wrong playing, I can hear it immediately. Some modern atonal music may be the exeption .

[VOODOO U]

The OPs question is self centered. I can guarantee if i were to input random notes of a violin sound into songs i write it will soind like shit.

[jancivil]

I can draw no inference from "random notes" clicking about with no apparent intention as though that elucidates their use of instruments sounding harmonious or not. I have no idea what this actually is from what was written there, or know why sounds please or displease the individual.

It's also not useful to state conclusions from discussion of an instrument's harmonic profile per se.* I've never had difficulty with 'a piano' clashing with other things owing to its construction per se. Could be I know what I'm doing, though.
Although the first time I wrote for piano it was an instrument from a sample library where the strings of one note were noticeably out-of-tune. I worked with the pitch bend lane a long damned time and got the effect disguised enough to where no one would notice it. I don't notice it today, I didn't memorize where it is. Not sure anyone will have noticed, as the adustment was very tiny.

If there is such a clash strictly owing to a combination of instruments this is an arranging issue, or instruments that are too shite not to sound shite. For any of this to be meaningful we'll have to get into actual cases, and it may result that no one agrees with another's conclusions. "open voicings for chords below middle C" looks like some dogma to me. Is this with piano? What kind of piano? Whose piano? So a closed position triad from C 8ve below middle C is bad per se? What's the music, what's the arrangement comprised of? This insists that everyone playing C and G major chords in open position on a guitar should be paranoid about bad clashes because of the overtone series. This is total horseshit. Think what you think, I'm not here to stop you, but no one should take this as advice. There will be plenty of cases where care might be advised, but we're veering into aesthetics and taste before long.

[Shabdahbriah]

compared to say piano or guitar/bass.

I mean random notes, I sometimes just draw stuff into the midi track
and it fits way more often harmonically when i use a violin sound.

Any explanation?

Links to examples of your tracks demonstrating this phenomena would be helpful.

[Gamma-UT]

"open voicings for chords below middle C" looks like some dogma to me. Is this with piano? What kind of piano? Whose piano? So a closed position triad from C 8ve below middle C is bad per se? What's the music, what's the arrangement comprised of? This insists that everyone playing C and G major chords in open position on a guitar should be paranoid about bad clashes because of the overtone series. This is total horseshit. Think what you think, I'm not here to stop you, but no one should take this as advice. There will be plenty of cases where care might be advised, but we're veering into aesthetics and taste before long.

Oh, here we go again. Out from under the bridge.

No, there isn’t a lot of nuance in a 50-word quick answer that makes some assumptions about what the OP was referring to.

But for a self-professed “expert” who likes to browbeat everyone else with their “expertise” you seem bizarrely ignorant of the broad advice on voicing for clarity or dissonance avoidance in quite a lot, if not all, arrangement and orchestration texts.

However, dissonance avoidance does rather assume you want to avoid the dissonance.

[VOODOO U]

compared to say piano or guitar/bass.

I mean random notes, I sometimes just draw stuff into the midi track
and it fits way more often harmonically when i use a violin sound.

Any explanation?

Links to examples of your tracks demonstrating this phenomena would be helpful.

Let's not kid ourselves. The OP doesn't realize that the reason the violin sound fits no matter what random notes are laid out is because it's the only instrument loaded.

[jancivil]

The original question states "I mean random notes". Nothing really meaningful can be said, because the harmonic profile differs as to range and per how much velocity in the initial attack. We can note that as pertains to the hammers of a piano, harder hitting results in a lot more happening. The higher pitch we're playing, the less harmonics, and this difference gets radical.

We can say the violin has a more consistent harmonic profile than a piano; to draw from this 'it's more pleasant per se' is a mistake. There'll be a point where it isn't. A key difference is due to the method of attack; hammers and a stiffer string tend to produce more inharmonicity, ie., more variance from integer results than a violin. To say more than objective fact is opinion.

Nobody working in music for real thinks to replace a piano line with a violin except as a decision in arrangement/orchestration. It saeems highly doubtful that "Oh shit, the piano (or whatever) produces too much inharmonicity" - as if that means 'too harsh' - is going to be the way for anybody.

Music is contextual. Those of us who compose or arrange music make decisions by our ear. No one is measuring this stuff. From those statements it looks as though 'inharmonicity' is in itself supposed as less desirable. This is not dealing with music. Likewise, we may notice that lower fundamentals esp. with a grand piano, esp w.the hammers really coming down produce more and more harmonics the lower we go. It may be inadvisable for certain cases to have close voicings, this may mean to a person 'for many cases'. However if one heeds this 'below middle C' business one has arbitrary restrictions nothing to do with musical thought. I've never in my life had to care about a dividing line where eg., below it it's supposed to be too muddy, or I'm looking at clashes.
As per 'inadvisable in certain cases', in certain other cases I may want a dense AF cluster. What's the musical idea? We go by dogmatic shit we're stifled, we can hardly put a foot forward finally.

ALL of this is experiential. What does it sound like? I know enough about the harmonic profile of this or that; but it's not that I've gone and measured stuff, it's not that I have such a storehouse of information and facility of recall, it's experience with sounds. Information is not knowledge. If you've never walked, reading about it isn't going to mean you know from walking.

So when somebody asserts a 'never do this' because of some fact on paper, they've exposed to me they aren't doing much.
I didn't come here looking for a fight or that shit, but the overall the presentation struck me as fatuous, overconfident and I happen to know from experience these glib assertions won't in the end add up to something a person can use, not as stated. "Middle C"? Arbitrary, empty of all context. and I don't suffer bullshit all that well.