Resonance

[Richard Brekne]

Lawrence Becker wrote:

> At 01:53 AM 6/8/01, you wrote:
>
> >     Second, piano soundboards should not resonate.
> >They do, of course, but it would be best if they did not. And, while I don't
> >know anything about violin design I rather suspect that violin soundboards
> >shouldn't resonate either.
> >
> This is something I hadn't thought about before.  If soundboards don't
> resonate, what are they doing?  They're vibrating, right?  Is resonance a
> sort of harmonic vibration?  How is that different from their ideal sound
> production?
>

I am sure if you think about the word resonance... as in resonance frequencies
you will see why this is not such a great thing in pianos. Remember ever seeing
that short film clip of the famous bending bridge.. the one the bent and twisted
in a wind storm like it was made of rubber ? Resonance at work.

Resonance in soundboards happens at certain frequencies and this causes all kinds
of nicieties pianobuilders could do without. As an overstated example say you
have a soundboard that has one of its resonate frequencies at 1000 hz. Then you
have strings that vibrate at 800, 900, 1000, 1100, and 1200 hz. You can imagine
there is sort of a built in problem here right ?

We often use words like resonance to mean something else really then they do.
Sounds nice often enough in a sentence....."ahhh such a fine resonant response
that instrument has....such colour... such...etc etc" ... but the word presicely
defined doesnt really fit there...grin.




> ----------------------------------
> Lawrence Becker, RPT
> Piano Technician
> College-Conservatory of Music
> University of Cincinnati
> ----------------------------------

--
Richard Brekne
RPT, N.P.T.F.
Bergen, Norway
mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no