How precisely does an acoustic guitar or violin produce its sweet sound? There is a simple, centuries-old way to literally "see" the vibrational patterns that cause the guitar to resonate and produce ...

Forty-five years ago, as a freshman in college, Cal Meineke was poking around a music department storage room and came across a rare Tyrolean violin made in the 17th century by the German Matthias ...

What's the physical mechanism behind the distinctive sound of a banjo? David Politzer — probably better known for his work on quantum chromodynamics than his passion for banjos — may not be the first ...

The octobass is a huge stringed instrument that is twice the size of a double bass when standing, about 3.6 meters, and the strings cannot be pressed as they are, so the strings are pressed with a ...

At the heart of many of the world’s musical instruments is the same, simple component—a string stretched tight between two points. Plucked, bowed, or struck, each of an instrument’s strings creates ...

The National Institute of Forest Science (NIFS) on July 10 announced its development of a technology to boost the acoustic properties of wood used to make string instruments by using wood-rotting ...

Ever stumbled across a sound that made you stop in your tracks? Maybe it was something ancient and unfamiliar, yet strangely ...