Physical modelling of a harp from Central Africa.

Central Africa harps are string instruments, often anthropomorphic, serving an essential cultural role. Compared to pedal harps, their body is small in size with a soundboard mainly made of animal skin and a neck made of a wood beam. In this paper, a physical model is developed as a tool for assessing the specificities of these musical instruments, from a vibro-acoustic perspective.

Influence of the player on the dynamics of the electric guitar.

The sound of the electric guitar is strongly dependent on the string vibration. Where a mode of the structure coincides with a mode of the fretted string, coupling between the string and structure occurs at that "deadspot." The coupling significantly lowers decay time, leading to the name [Paté, Le Carrou, and Fabre (2014).

Effects of internal resonances in the pitch glide of Chinese gongs.

The framework of nonlinear normal modes gives a remarkable insight into the dynamics of nonlinear vibratory systems exhibiting distributed nonlinearities. In the case of Chinese opera gongs, geometrical nonlinearities lead to a pitch glide of several vibration modes in playing situation. This study investigates the relationship between the nonlinear normal modes formalism and the ascendant pitch glide of the fundamental mode of a xiaoluo gong.

Modal active control of Chinese gongs.

Instruments that belong to the gong family exhibit nonlinear dynamics at large amplitudes of vibration. In the specific case of the xiaoluo gong, this nonlinear behavior results in a pitch glide of several modes of the instrument in addition to harmonic distortion and internal resonances. This study applies a linear modal active control to a xiaoluo gong in an attempt to change its sound properties.

Active control and sound synthesis--two different ways to investigate the influence of the modal parameters of a guitar on its sound.

The vibrational behavior of musical instruments is usually studied using physical modeling and simulations. Recently, active control has proven its efficiency to experimentally modify the dynamical behavior of musical instruments. This approach could also be used as an experimental tool to systematically study fine physical phenomena.