The acoustical properties of wood for instruments have mostly been studied on a few archetypal woods in Western musical instruments. The objective of this paper is to extend knowledge on the diversity in wood properties and uses in instruments from different geo-cultural areas. A wide set of data has been collected on vibrational properties of 452 species, through experiments and literature survey. Property distributions within broad categories confirm the known characteristics of softwoods, but also evidence specificities of tropical hardwoods compared to temperate-zone species. A relational database has been created to link wood properties and uses in musical instruments of the world. Two case studies on acoustically important functions in different geo-cultural areas show contrasted trends: (i) species used for xylophone bars and slit-drums in different continents all share a very low internal friction, (ii) on the contrary, the only characteristic common to soundboards’ woods is a lower than average density, whereas their acoustical properties differ widely between them and with the “Western” standard in wood choice. All these materials being nevertheless adapted to their context, cultural specificities in the structure, playing mode and “sonority” preferences should also be taken into account.
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January 2012
January 13 2012
Acoustical properties of wood in string instruments soundboards and tuned idiophones: Biological and cultural diversity a)
Iris Brémaud
Iris Brémaud
b)
Laboratoire de Mécanique et Génie Civil (LMGC),
CNRS, Université Montpellier 2
, Place Eugène Bataillon, cc 048, 34095 Montpellier Cedex 5, France
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b)
Current address: Wood Laboratory, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa), Überlandstrasse 129, CH-8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland. Electronic mail: [email protected]
a)
Preliminary portions of this work were presented at a meeting of COST Action IE0601, Wood Science for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage, in Braga, Portugal, November 2008.
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 131, 807–818 (2012)
Article history
Received:
December 15 2010
Accepted:
March 25 2011
Citation
Iris Brémaud; Acoustical properties of wood in string instruments soundboards and tuned idiophones: Biological and cultural diversity . J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1 January 2012; 131 (1): 807–818. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.3651233
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