String Resonance in Music Instruments
String resonance occurs on string instruments. Strings or parts of strings may resonate at their fundamental or overtone frequencies when other strings are sounded. For example, an A string at 440 Hz will cause an E string at 330 Hz to resonate, because they share an overtone of 1320 Hz (3rd harmonic of A and 4th harmonic of E).
According to Grove Music Online (2007) article on Duplex Scaling, Steinway progressed a system of aliquot scaling to provide sympathetic resonance with the intention of enriching the treble register of the pianoforte. In the 'octave duplex' piano by Hoerr of Toronto, each note had four strings, of which two, three or four could potentially be struck by the hammer depending on the depression of one of four pedals. Steinway’s duplex scale was precipitated a half century earlier by an experiment conducted by the German piano maker Wilhelm Leberecht Petzoldt, in which a small bridge was placed behind the standard larger one with the intention of maximizing the potential additional resonance of a sympathetically vibrating additional length of string.
Read more about this topic: Sympathetic Resonance
Famous quotes containing the words string, resonance, music and/or instruments:
“As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is closing time in the gardens of the West and from now on an artist will be judged only by the resonance of his solitude or the quality of his despair.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie;
My music shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.”
—George Herbert (1593–1633)
“But when to mischiefmortals bend their will,
How soon they find fit instruments of ill!”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)