In another post, I said "tone is the soul of a note". In this post, I'll ramble on more about the nature of tone, and the musician's constant quest for it.
Tone is an acoustical quality that defines an instrument's "sound". For certain instruments, tone can be influenced, to a certain extent, by the player while playing, and this I refer to as "voice", which I explore in a different post.
Apart from a player's influence, an instrument has it's own fundamental tone. The first influence on an instrument's tone is its build. The build includes the material, size, shape, and sounding mechanisms.
Let's start with a piano, an instrument whose tone the player has perhaps the least control over. Consider the difference between a standard concert grand piano, and a honky-tonk-style up-right.
The first thing you notice is the difference in size and shape of the two. The grand is certainly larger, and quite different in shape. Whereas the grand piano may be up to ten feet long, the upright might only be 50-55" high. You also surmise that the strings in the grand are horizontally arranged, whereas they are vertical in the upright.
When you listen to the two, the differences are amazing. The grand is loud, it's voice is clear; it broadcasts it's music, it's purpose is the grand stage or hall. The upright can be loud, but it is more suited to a smaller setting; it's voice is more clipped, it shouts, it snidely talks under its breath, it's made for the home or the bar room, for the auditorium or the choir.
On closer inspection, you notice that the materials aren't all that different between the two; they''re both made of wood, maybe mahogany, both have a metal soundboard, and both have metal strings. What, then, causes such a difference in their sounds?
The size of the instrument has a direct bearing on its sound. Larger instruments aren't necessarily louder or better sounding, as I found out one day when I was shopping for something old and wooden.
I was in a vintage guitar store in Chicago, on the hunt for an old 12 string guitar to add to my collection. I knew what I wanted - a room filling sound, rich in lows and mid-range, with a voice that would carry it right through you. While I was looking for this miracle, I happened across a vintage 3/4 size six string from the 1930's. I can't remember the make or model, but this little guitar was gorgeous. And then I played it.
My god, I thought, as sound filled the entire store. Who has built an amplifier into this guitar? The bass was clear, the mid-range sang, and the high's were like crystal. I had found my miracle! This was the sound, the tone, the voice that a guitar should have.
There was only one problem. It was $700, and I had $200. (It was the early '80's. Vintage guitars were relatively cheap.) I reluctantly put the little guitar back, and found a Guild jumbo 12 string from the 70's, which I sold some years later. Don't get me wrong, the Guild was a fine sounding guitar, but I was forever spoiled by the sound of that little 3/4 size.
Shape counts too. The shape affects how the sound is broadcast from the instrument, as well as how the sound waves interact with each other, giving each shape a unique voice.
It is interesting to look at how wood affects sound; and we can do that. Let's look at some "Chladni" patterns on a guitar top. ("What the hell is a Chladni pattern???", you ask.)
To understand, we need to explore a bit of physics. First, the wave pattern associated with the natural frequencies of an object (say, the top of a guitar) is characterized by points that appear to be standing still. For this reason, the pattern is often called a "standing wave pattern." The points in the pattern that are standing still are referred to as nodal points or nodal positions. To visualize this, we can attach a metal plate to a source of vibration (say, a speaker), sprinkle some salt on the plate, and turn the speaker on to a particular frequency. Patterns will magically appear on the plate when the frequency of the sound produced by the speaker is adjusted. The salt will gather in the areas where the plate is not moving! These are known as "Chladni patterns", after the 17th century German physicist and musician, Ernst Chladni. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Chladni is one source for more information.)
Here are the Chladni patterns of a guitar top at a few different fequencies:
(Images from http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/guitar/patterns_engl.html, Chladni images made by Thomas Erndl / thomas.erndl@gmx.de, reproduced here with kind permission of Joe Wolfe, School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw)
Isn't amazing how different the patterns are with only a small change in the frequency? I don't know the particular wood that these patterns produced, but we can assume it's some type of spruce, as most guitar tops are. A different wood, the same type of wood from a different tree, or even the exact same guitar top in 20 years time would produce different patterns at the same frequencies shown above!
In the end, while the player can add their own "voice" to the way the instrument sounds, the tone of an acoustic instrument is largely in the hands of the crafts-person who created it. One of these days soon, I'll explore a medium where the musician has almost total control over the tone of their instrument - the amplified instrument.
Until then, play often and play like you love it!
No comments:
Post a Comment