“Mode studies in musical instruments,” a journey with Tom

Abstract

For me, that journey began when Tom agreed to have me work with him in 1984. While Tom was busy at the Minneapolis ASA meeting, I learned about holographic interferometry at Dick Peterson's laboratory at Bethel College, while mode mapping a guitar, for which Tom had designed a support rack which isolated the front and back plates, enabling us to record their principle resonances. Immediately following that experience, we went on a whirlwind tour, meeting with some of the “Greats” in musical acoustics. Starting with Carleen Hutchins, we then met with Norman Pickering in Southampton, did some modal analysis guitar studies at the Steinway laboratories with William Y. Strong, and later visited with Gaby Weinreich. We concluded the tour with a visit to Gila Eba,'s guitar building studio. In the course of studying two-tone Chinese bells, we used judicious mirror placements to observe the bell modes in three dimensions. Eventually, the wet plates were replaced by Karl Stetson's computer based device, enabling us...