source file: mills2.txt Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 21:17:58 -0800 Subject: Nonuniform Strings From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@compuserve.com> Oh, now that Dan brought up the topic of nonuniform strings, try this experiment sometime: Wrap a grocery-store vegetable-bag "twist tie" very tightly around the G or D string of a guitar and place it at the center of the string, right above the octave fret. The results are ... uhmmm... "decidedly non-string-like", I'll say. What happens is the odd-numbered partials, which have an antinode at that point on the (open) string drop way down in pitch, but the even partials, which have a node at that point on the string, don't change much at all. You also find that the nodes of partials move toward the center of the string. By that I mean that the third-harmonic (although it's far from harmonic now!) nodal point you normally get by lightly touching the string over the seventh fret, moves quite a bit toward the octave fret. Presumably it's seeking a point where all three of the loops have equal mass (or probably more accurately, equal torque: mass times distance from the node). Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sat, 4 Jan 1997 06:16 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA00987; Sat, 4 Jan 1997 06:19:50 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA00985 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id VAA04514; Fri, 3 Jan 1997 21:19:49 -0800 Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 21:19:49 -0800 Message-Id: <199701040016_MC2-E3F-449A@compuserve.com> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu