Plucked Strings and the Harpsichord

Giordano, N.; Winans, J.P.

doi:10.1006/jsvi.1999.2187

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(12 reference statements)

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“…5 or 6), the force will first rise during the sticking phase, reach its maximum at the onset of the slipping phase, and then decrease during the slipping phase. The shape of the curve representing the plucking force has a similar behavior to those measured on a harpsichord 15 . Nevertheless, the measured order of magnitude for a plectrum (1.5 N) is much lower than the force magnitude measured for the finger in the present study (up to 15 N).…”

Section: Finger and String Movementssupporting

confidence: 58%

“…The durations of the sticking and the slipping phases which have been measured for the harpsichord, hence plucked with a plectrum, are respectively about 150 ms and 8 ms 15 .…”

Section: Phase Durationsmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…The general mechanism of plucking strings can be described as a succession of three temporal phases 14 : the string is pulled from its initial position until at a particular threshold force (sticking phase), the string slips on the plectrum or on the finger (slipping phase) until it loses contact and is free to vibrate (free oscillation phase). For the harpsichord, this plectrum-string interaction was experimentally studied in detail 15 : initial conditions during normal playing were measured and, with a particular set-up, the plectrum force during all the interaction (sticking and slipping phase) has been estimated. These results allowed the authors to validate a simple plucking model.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Experimentally based description of harp plucking

Chadefaux

Carrou

Fabre

et al. 2012

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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This paper describes an experimental study of string plucking for the classical harp. Its goal is to characterize the playing parameters that play the most important roles in expressivity, and in the way harp players recognize each other, even on isolated notes--what we call the "acoustical signature" of each player. We have designed a specific experimental setup using a high-speed camera that tracks some markers on the fingers and on the string. This provides accurate three-dimensional positioning of the finger and of the string throughout the plucking action, in different musical contexts. From measurements of ten harp players, combined with measurements of the soundboard vibrations, we extract a set of parameters that finely control the initial conditions of the string's free oscillations. Results indicate that these initial conditions are typically a complex mix of displacement and velocity, with additional rotation. Although remarkably reproducible by a single player--and the more so for professional players--we observe that some of these control parameters vary significantly from one player to another.

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Section: Finger and String Movementssupporting

confidence: 58%

“…The durations of the sticking and the slipping phases which have been measured for the harpsichord, hence plucked with a plectrum, are respectively about 150 ms and 8 ms 15 .…”

Section: Phase Durationsmentioning

confidence: 84%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Experimentally based description of harp plucking

Chadefaux

Carrou

Fabre

et al. 2012

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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“…Hall (1993) agrees with Benade (1990) that changes in loudness are possible based on simulations of the plectrum-string interaction and an informal test on an unspecified harpsichord. Griffel’s (1994) model also supports this, claiming that the amplitude of string motion is related to jack velocity, however, Giordano and Winans (1999) refute Griffel’s (1994) claims based on measurements of a small model of the plucking mechanism made with a plastic jack and plectrum. Studies investigating the production and perception of dynamics in harpsichords are rare, with the exception of Penttinen’s (2006) study.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Using historical accounts of harpsichord touch to empirically investigate the production and perception of dynamics on the 1788 Taskin

MacRitchie

Nuti

2015

Front. Psychol.

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This article investigates the extent of production and perception of dynamic differences on a French historical harpsichord, extensively revised in 1788 by Pascal Taskin. A historical review reports on the descriptions of two different types of touch found in treatises of the 18th century. These two touches (loud/struck and soft/pressed) were used to perform single tones on the lower, upper, peau de buﬄe (PDB) registers (the last of which Taskin is credited with having invented) and the coupled 8-foot registers to investigate differences in dynamics. Acoustic measurements show varied differences of up to 11 dB for the two types of touch over different pitches in each register. The strongest difference is measured in the first harmonic of note F2 on the PDB. A listening experiment was conducted to test whether these differences are perceivable. Participants performed a discrimination task using pairs of single tones. Participants were able to perform significantly better than chance in correctly identifying whether pairs of single tones were same or different with respect to loudness [t(24) = 12.01, p < 0.001]. Accuracies were influenced by pitch and register, the PDB providing the strongest accuracies over the four registers tested.

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“…To carry an experimentally based study of the string's vibrations, the choice or the design of a particular procedure depends on the string's properties as well as the global measurement context. Although researchers mostly use electromagnetic pickup [1], electrodynamic method [2] or electric field sensing methods [3][4][5][6][7] in the case of a steel string, these methods cannot be applied to other common string's materials such as gut or nylon. In this case, optical methods should be more appropriate to obtain the string displacement by an optical tracking device [8], by a photoelectric sensor [9] or using a high-speed camera coupled to image processing [10,11] or the string velocity through a laser doppler vibrometer [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A low-cost high-precision measurement method of string motion

Carrou

Chadefaux

Seydoux

et al. 2014

Journal of Sound and Vibration

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The high-precision measurement of a string's motion requires either the use of an expensive apparatus or the development of a dedicated system. In this paper, a cheaper alternative based on opto-switch sensors combined with a suitable calibration is proposed. A sensitivity model requiring only two straightforward preliminary measurements to determine the parameters is presented. A comparison on a bench test between the opto-switch sensor and a high-speed camera has been performed. Results indicate that the calibrated opto-switch provides more accurate measurements of the string's motion in quasi-static as well as in dynamic states.

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Plucked Strings and the Harpsichord

Cited by 8 publications

References 16 publications

Experimentally based description of harp plucking

Experimentally based description of harp plucking

Using historical accounts of harpsichord touch to empirically investigate the production and perception of dynamics on the 1788 Taskin

A low-cost high-precision measurement method of string motion

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