Correlation of string/body resonances on a cello
S. A. Young · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2018
This project focuses on a 2001 Garavaglia full size acoustic cello, and investigates the resonance properties of a wooden body. Previous studies have estimated that the body resonance lies between the range of D3-F3#. The goals are to investigate the radiation patterns of the produced sound waves, to take high-speed video of a played string to physically observe the standing wave, and to simulate the body resonance of the cello. A mathematical model is formed to approach the situation where a musician plucks a string. Typical approaches assume the surface area of a finger to be a point source, but the surface area is actually parabolic, forming a bend in the string that is continuous to the following straight line. High speed video was taken to try out methods for tracking a standing wave at 1000 frames per second for a maximum number of data points per period. We will correlate the waveform fits from the high speed videos to the Fourier transformations from the acoustic data. These same methods will be applied in an anechoic chamber to test “ideal” conditions in order to isolate the body resonances. We will correlate the data from body resonances to our string data.