Towards a physical model of the berimbau: Obtaining the modal synthesis of the cabaza
Pablo Castellanos Macin, Julius O. Smith · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2013
The worldwide presence of Brazilian culture grows every day. However, some of the musical instruments used in its principal cultural activities lack of a formal acoustic analysis which would make them more understandable for the rest of the world. One of them is the berimbau-de-barriga (berimbau), which consists of a string (wire) attached to an arched rod and a resonance box called cabaza. Modeling the berimbau will not only open up possibilities for its application to other musical genres, but will also allow the incorporation of its characteristics into new virtual instruments. The present work describes the modal synthesis of the cabaza, i.e., modeling this sounding box as a parallel bank of digital resonators. Impulse response measurements were obtained using a force hammer, and second-order resonator frequency-responses were fit to the data using Matlab.