Construction of Wooden Musical Instruments

Chapter
Part of the Springer Handbooks book series (SPRINGERHAND)

Abstract

This work aims to provide an overview of why and how wood is used in musical instruments, primarily strings, woodwind and percussion. The introduction is a description of the desirable properties of a musical instrument and how these relate to the physical properties of wood. A summary is given of the most important woods mentioned in this chapter, including common and Latin names. Section 4.2 discusses the physical properties of woods most relevant to musical instruments and how they relate to their biological taxonomy and also to organology. Sections 4.3 and 4.4 are devoted respectively to woods that make up the acoustically radiant parts of instruments (tonewoods), and those whose function is to transmit vibrations from one part to another, or are simply structural (framewoods). Section 4.5 deals with how the wood is selected, prepared, assembled into an instrument, and finished.

2-D

two-dimensional

ACE

acoustic conversion efficiency

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Dept. of Physics & AstronomyUniversity of British ColumbiaVancouverCanada
  2. 2.DazaifuJapan

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