On 02.2.5 11:26 AM, "Nelson Zink" <zink@newmex.com> wrote:
> Peter,
>
>> An article that touches on many of these issues can be found at the
>> Recorder web site: http://members.iinet.net.au/~nickl/wood.html
>> The article talks about the different qualities of oils and techniques
>> for oiling instruments.
>
> Now we're talkin'!
>
>> It is certainly true that different woods
>> create different sounding recorders, and a well made wooden instrument
>> sounds much better than the best quality plastic recorder.
>
> Could you expound on this a little more? Acoustical texts display just as
> much certainty in the opposite direction. What is it about this issue that
> resists resolution?
>
> Nelson
>
I don't get the controversy. Has anyone ever seriously argued that the
material something is made of has no effect on the tone that thing will
produced when struck, blown into, or twanged (is that a word?)?
Isn't it intuitively and experientially obvious from playing the thing that
the material vibrates along with with column of air, and determines in large
part how the column of air will sound?
Ever play a wooden shakuhachi? It sounds like wood, not bamboo. There's a
reason that people don't all play wooden shakuhachi, or PVC shakuhachi.
Take a wooden bowl and a glass bowl of the same size. Would you expect them
to sound the same when tapped? Of course you wouldn't.
I remember hearing somewhere that the Stratavarius (sp?) violins that cost
millions have their distinctive sound because the trees used in making them
grew in a swamp. I'm no violin expert, but for some reason that piece of
trivia has always stuck in my head.
I'm not sure physics or acoustics textbooks have that much to teach us about
shakuhachi. Then again maybe that's why I dropped out of physics....
Best,
Zachary Braverman
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