Brauchler Alexander, Gonzalez Sebastian, Vierneisel Manuel, Ziegler Pascal, Antonacci Fabio, Sarti Augusto, Eberhard Peter
Institute of Engineering and Computational Mechanics, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany.
Musical Acoustics Lab at the Violin Museum of Cremona, DEIB-Politecnico di Milano, Cremona Campus, Cremona, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2023 Aug 7;13(1):12766. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-37943-y.
Musical instrument making is often considered a mysterious form of art, its secrets still escaping scientific quantification. There is not yet a formula to make a good instrument, so historical examples are regarded as the pinnacle of the craft. This is the case of Stradivari's violins or Torres guitars that serve as both models and examples to follow. Geometric copies of these instruments are still the preferred way of building new ones, yet reliably making acoustic copies of them remains elusive. One reason for this is that the variability of the wood used for instruments makes for a significant source of uncertainty-no two pieces of wood are the same. In this article, using state-of-the-art methodologies, we show a method for matching the vibrational response of two guitar top plates made with slightly different materials. To validate our method, we build two guitar soundboards: one serving as a reference and the second acting as a copy to which we apply model-predicted geometry variations. The results are twofold. Firstly, we can experimentally validate the predictive capabilities of our numerical model regarding geometry changes. Secondly, we can significantly reduce the deviation between the two plates by these precisely predicted geometry variations. Although applied to guitars here, the methodology can be extended to other instruments, e.g. violins, in a similar fashion. The implications of such a methodology for the craft could be far-reaching by turning instrument-making more into a science than artistic craftsmanship and paving the way to accurately copy historical instruments of a high value.
乐器制作常常被视为一种神秘的艺术形式，其奥秘仍未得到科学量化。目前还没有制造出优质乐器的公式，因此历史上的范例被视为这门技艺的巅峰之作。斯特拉迪瓦里小提琴或托雷斯吉他就是这样的例子，它们既是典范，也是效仿的对象。这些乐器的几何复制品仍然是制造新乐器的首选方式，然而，可靠地制作出它们的声学复制品却仍然难以实现。原因之一在于，用于制作乐器的木材具有变异性，这成为了一个重大的不确定因素来源——没有两块木材是完全相同的。在本文中，我们运用最先进的方法，展示了一种匹配由略有不同材料制成的两块吉他面板振动响应的方法。为了验证我们的方法，我们制作了两块吉他音板：一块作为参考，另一块作为复制品，我们对其应用模型预测的几何变化。结果有两方面。首先，我们可以通过实验验证我们的数值模型在几何变化方面的预测能力。其次，通过这些精确预测的几何变化，我们可以显著减小两块面板之间的偏差。尽管这里是应用于吉他，但该方法可以以类似的方式扩展到其他乐器，比如小提琴。这种方法对这门技艺的影响可能是深远的，它会使乐器制作更多地从一门艺术工艺转变为一门科学，并为精确复制高价值的历史乐器铺平道路。
