Relating the harmonic-rich sound of the Chinese flute (dizi) to the cubic nonlinearity of its membrane
Chen‐Gia Tsai · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2012
Among the flute-type instruments all over the world, only the Chinese flute (dizi) and the Korean taegum have a membrane covering a hole in the wall of the instrument between the embouchure hole and the uppermost finger-hole. Nonlinear vibration of the dizi membrane endows dizi tones with a bright quality, which is due to the harmonics in the frequency range of 4–7 kHz. We provided a Duffing model of the dizi membrane, finding good agreement between this model and experimental results. Furthermore, we suggest that wrinkling of the membrane may be critical to its cubic nonlinearity.