I cam across this YouTube video (4:45 total) that explains the physics of how a plucked string actually behaves. It is fascinating. It blew my mind.
It includes explanations of why plucking in different locations produces different tones, as well as difference between plucking, striking, bowing, etc.
That WAS fascinating. Thanks for sharing!
It was very interesting! I had no idea the strings behave this way.
Wow! I love these kind of little explainers of things we think we know!
Very cool and I’m just a little sad they didn’t take the final step… “And in the end, it IS vibrating like a sine wave, but it’s a sine wave with many complex harmonics” - and then show why.
They briefly mention it but it’s a neat thing for how sound works.
Whoa. Brings back 40 year old memories from a graduate Acoustical Physics course I took. The video tools we have today are so much better than what we had back then. Sure, straight lines and angles, but the math describing that motion is far less pleasant to look at (or solve).
Lol yup. Even coming from the other direction (building up such waveforms by modulating sine waves + their harmonics) is ugly.
This just caused me to wonder about how the string vibrates when you play a harmonic.
