Lola's Blog Posts

One

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR6PfJZSqh0&feature=related

To produce the sound of the guitar, the player had to pluck at each string.

The way he changed the note was plucking at different parts of certain strings and holding certain strings down towards the top of the guitar. The guitar is shaped regularly. The strings are straight down from the top of the guitar to the middle. The big part is shaped as like…a circle with its two sides squished in. The creation and change of the sound makes me think of tension and the length of each string having something to do with the pitch. I think that as you tune the guitar, which is pulling the strings tighter or loosening them, you affect the damping. Since it would affect the damping, the sound would either travel slower or faster depending on the tension of the string.

Two

In a guitar, the sound is produced when you pluck the string of course. The thing about it is that when you hold your finger in different places on the string of the guitar, the sounds changes. The reason this is so is because the wavelengths change, giving you a lower sound the longer the wavelength, and a higher sound the shorter the wavelength, the frequency of the wave is also affected by the wavelength. When the wavelength is short, the frequency is high and when the wavelength is long, the frequency is low. In order to change the wavelength you must hold your finger at certain parts of the guitar string, making the string either shorter or longer when you pluck it with your other finger. The sound is loud because of the vibration. In the guitar there is a hole in the middle and a box kind of thing behind it. The vibration bounces off of that back piece of the guitar and out through the hole.

To change the pitch of my instrument, I will do the same. I will hold my fingers down at a specific spot on the string and pluck it. The physical characteristics that are important in this instrument are the length of the string and the tension of the string.

I will be using wood and copper strings. I chose to use these two things because they are also used in guitars, harps, and other string instruments and they all get good sounds. To play it, I will pluck the strings at certain parts. My plan to construct this instrument is to build it just like how a harp looks….or as close as I can get to one.