Yow-yow-yowing bass strings

[Nathan Bower]

To me this backs up the "sympathetic" theory that the noise produced by an
undamped local string, or by the combination of the notes produced.. As the
note played gets closer to the harmonic of the badly damped string the noise
sympathetic noise generated.

A string will always produce only 1 note, but if undamped will be excited
(to a lesser extent) by frequencies close to its fundamental frequency. I
suppose this could produce 2 notes (original and noise note) which cause a
percieved beat or cycle of its intefering noise. wah-wah.

N


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    Bill, et al.....   I've thought about this phenomena many times, and I
was really hoping someone would put a definitive answer out here on the
list, but I haven't seen one yet.
    I've noticed this on a couple of Yamaha's, and the funny thing about it
is just that, going down into the bass, you get to a point where one string
starts a very faint yow-yow longitudinal wave thingee, the next note is
worse, the third note is really noticeable, and then the next note not so
noticeable, and the next note it's almost gone.  I just thought it must have
something to do with the strike point crossing a node, or something. I don't
know what to do about it, other than to say that almost every interval where
we can play two notes together will produce beats somewhere, so it shouldn't
be bothersome in such a lively "vibrato" instrument.
    I'd still like to know how to do something about it, though.
    Kevin E. Ramsey