Back To Basics: Acoustics (part 1)

Blowing, twanging, strumming, plucking and thumping musical instruments all create magic. In this article I take a cursory look at some of the acoustic properties behind this

In my miniseries on the Schumann Resonance we watched a wobbly jelly, we listened to a brandy glass being hit with a wooden spoon, and I ranted on about the Schumann Resonance being a harmonic series and not a single frequency. What I’d like to do today is take something massively familiar – an acoustic guitar – and examine the sound it makes using a few analytical techniques that you’ll see cropping up time and time again in future articles. To make sense of these readers need to become familiar with some basic harmonic principles and I felt that a twang would be a good way to start.

First up is a photo of the willing volunteer…

This Canadian built Simon & Patrick Woodland CW Spruce Presys II has been tuned to the ISO standard of A = 440Hz using the time-honoured EADGBE system and I shall now pluck the low E string…