[CAUT] The fundamental - Where is it?

[Fred Sturm]

I had a bit of time to look some more at "The Physics of Musical  
Instruments" (seems to be the basic text on the subject), and the  
reference for the statement that for A0 the fundamental is 25dB below  
the level of the strongest component is footnoted to an article from  
1978 by a J. Meyer in a German journal (which we don't have in our  
library - I can provide the specifics if anyone is interested).
	But looking through a few more paragraphs, I found some interesting  
statements, also referred to the same Meyer article, that might be  
interesting to many of you.

"The sound level difference between single notes played FF and PP is  
30 to 35 dB. At a distance of 10 m from the piano, one finds levels  
from 50 to 85 dB in the bass and from 37 to 70 dB in the treble. Much  
of the difference between FF and PP playing is due to change in timbre  
rather than loudness. Playing FF emphasizes the higher partials.  
Depressing the una corda pedal reduces the sound level by about 1 dB,  
but also changes the timbre. Raising or lowering the lid causes  
surprisingly little change in the overall sound level, although it  
causes rather marked changes in the strength of the high frequency  
sound in certain directions."

	Some of this is pretty standard stuff, but the numbers are rather  
interesting, especially the 1 dB for una corda. One does want to  
examine the experimental set up to know the precise details (one  
assumes it was set up so that one string was cleared, for instance,  
but maybe not). Anyway, food for thought, and some nice facts to have  
in the back pocket for talking intelligently to customers.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm at unm.edu