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Construction of Wooden Musical Instruments

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Springer Handbook of Systematic Musicology

Part of the book series: Springer Handbooks ((SHB))

Abstract

This work aims to provide an overview of why and how wood is used in musical instruments, primarily strings, woodwind and percussion. The introduction is a description of the desirable properties of a musical instrument and how these relate to the physical properties of wood. A summary is given of the most important woods mentioned in this chapter, including common and Latin names. Section 4.2 discusses the physical properties of woods most relevant to musical instruments and how they relate to their biological taxonomy and also to organology. Sections 4.3 and 4.4 are devoted respectively to woods that make up the acoustically radiant parts of instruments (tonewoods), and those whose function is to transmit vibrations from one part to another, or are simply structural (framewoods). Section 4.5 deals with how the wood is selected, prepared, assembled into an instrument, and finished.

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Abbreviations

2-D:

two-dimensional

ACE:

acoustic conversion efficiency

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, University of British Columbia, 6224 Agricultural Rd., BC V6T 1Z1, Vancouver, Canada

    Chris Waltham

  2. 1-27-22 Aoyama, 818-0121, Dazaifu, Japan

    Shigeru Yoshikawa

Authors
  1. Chris Waltham
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  2. Shigeru Yoshikawa
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chris Waltham .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Systematic Musicology, University of Hamburg, Neue Rabenstr. 13, 20354, Hamburg, Germany

    Rolf Bader

Appendix

Appendix

The quality factor Q is a measure of the damping of a material; the higher the Q the more resonant the material is. If τ is the time it takes for a system freely vibrating at frequency f0 to decay to 1 ∕ e times its original amplitude, then Q = πf0τ. Alternately, in the frequency domain, if the width of a resonance at half-power is Δf, then \(Q=f_{0}/\Updelta f\). In older texts damping is referred to as the logarithmic decrement δ, and for Q ≫ 1, \(Q\approx\uppi/\delta\) (or if the author is working in base-ten logarithms, \(Q\approx{\mathrm{1.365}}/\delta_{10}\). Another form is the dimensionless damping ratio \(\zeta=1/(2Q)\), the loss factor η and the loss angle ψ.

$$Q=\frac{1}{\eta}=\frac{\uppi}{\delta}=\frac{1}{\tan\psi}\;.$$
(4.B6)

Another important characteristic for instrument woods is vibration transmission [4.2, 4.20, 4.48]. If the damping is relatively weak, the characteristic acoustic transmission is the reciprocal of the attenuation constant α of the longitudinal wave. The solution of the lossy wave equation gives

$$\alpha^{-1}=\frac{2Q}{k}=\frac{2cQ}{\omega}\;,$$
(4.B7)

where k and ω are the wave number and angular frequency respectively [4.32, 4.48]. Since ω is not a wood property, cQ may be used instead of cQ ∕ ω to express the transmission characteristic of the vibration excited in wood. In the text, cQ is called the transmission parameter.

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Waltham, C., Yoshikawa, S. (2018). Construction of Wooden Musical Instruments. In: Bader, R. (eds) Springer Handbook of Systematic Musicology. Springer Handbooks. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-55004-5_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-55004-5_4

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