Inharmonic sounds of bowed strings in Western music and Beijing opera
Chen‐Gia Tsai · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2006
Due to the nonlinear bow-string interaction, inharmonic sounds can be produced by bowed strings. Such sounds are characterized by subharmonics, sidebands, and noises. Bow location, bow speed, and bow pressure on the string have been found critical to producing inharmonic sounds on the violin or the cello. In the accompaniment music of Beijing opera singing, inharmonic sounds produced by the major bowed-string instrument (the jinghu) are sometimes called ‘‘blossoming tones.’’ They are played with a special touch technique of the left hand, and a chaotic behavior of string vibration arises from a nonlinear boundary condition with unilateral constraints. The spectra of blossoming tones can be viewed as high-pass noises, with the cutoff frequency of about 1.6 kHz. Blossoming tones are sophisticatedly used for emotional expressions in Beijing opera. Their harsh quality recalls some pathological human voices.