source file: mills2.txt Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 19:27:22 -0800 Subject: Re: Sympathetic Vibrations From: Matt Nathan Lydia Ayers wrote: > > This is a second attempt to post to the list in response to posts in > January about sympathetic vibrations (I'm trying to catch up with a > lot of old tuning posts): > > >> I believe that sympathetic strings do indeed work by transferring > >> the energy through the air. As a simple experiment, sing into a string > >> on a guitar, and you can easily set the string to vibrating > >> (sympathetically) with your voice. > > > In that particular case I'm almost certain that what gets the guitar > >string to vibrate is the sound waves from your voice vibrating the > >soundboard, which vibrates the strings. FAR less, I believe you'll find is > >a result of the air directly exciting the strings themselves. > > The justly-tuned aluminum tubes of my Woodstock Gamelan will vibrate > sympathetically whenever a pitch is soundeded at the same frequency as > one or more of them. This works not only when pitches are played on the > flute or sung, but even when I cough! Coughing gets quite a few of the > tubes to sound, and sometimes even when the cough is in a different room! > There is no sounding board on the "gamelan," so this phenomenon is > definitely transmitted through the air directly to the tubes. > > An interesting feature of sympathetic vibrations in strings or tubes is > that they lack the characteristic attack, and often have timbres closer > to sine waves than the timbres produced by "normal" playing techniques, > such as struck, plucked or bowed. > > Lydia Ayers Just to tell you, this message and the tonality message made it on the list. I received them here in Los Angeles. Matt Nathan Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Wed, 26 Feb 1997 06:50 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA31043; Wed, 26 Feb 1997 06:50:30 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA31020 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id VAA05723; Tue, 25 Feb 1997 21:48:24 -0800 Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 21:48:24 -0800 Message-Id: <3313CE57.5E74@ix.netcom.com> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu