Shining Music

摘要

Musical deal instruments are tools musicians use create or recreate art, or at least try to. But unlike a painter's brush or a sculpture's chisel, a musical instrument is also a kind of objet d'art itself. Moreover, in the hands of a great musical artist, a musical instrument takes on a kind of personality, which is the result of the artist's skill at taking advantage of a particular instrument's physical qualities. Thus, plating the metal for brass and reed musical instruments is a technical specialty for a very few metal finishers who are willing to spend the time to plate according to extremely exacting tolerances for very finicky customers. "The plating has to be absolutely flaw-free," says John Lindstedt, president of Artistic Plating in Milwaukee, Wis.