Violin Acoustics – a tale of coupled oscillators Seminar

What makes the difference in the quality of the sound of violins made by the great Italian violin maker Stradivarius, typically costing several millions of pounds, from those of most (but not all) later makers has fascinated both musicians and acousticians for almost 200 years. However, it is only recently that a successful model for the structural and acoustic properties has emerged. This talk will provide an overview of how the violin and its close relatives- the viola, cello and double bass- produce their sound and how our understanding of the vibrational and acoustic properties of such instruments has advanced from both recent experimental measurements on around 100 valuable early Italian violins and many fine modern instruments, and physical models validated by finite element computations. We will argue that the acoustical properties of the violin can be described by the vibrations of the thin-walled, shallow, box- like, shell structure of the violin body, with the broken symmetry of the individual top and back, guitar-shaped, anisotropic plates largely determining the frequencies and shapes of the acoustically important vibrational modes. As indicated by the title of the talk, the modes of the assembled violin, with neck, fingerboard, strings, etc attached, can then be considered simply as a collection of coupled oscillators, with the resulting normal modes determining the resulting vibrational and acoustical properties.