Guitar Strings Research Articles

Rain

Rain Terry Douglas (bio) Early that morning Cooley Price pulled his shirt tighter as he walked in the drizzling rain down to the corner where New River and Jasper Creek converged. He had lived there so long he no longer noticed the splendor of the two Appalachian waters. They now commanded attention. A tree floated down river clinging to a clump of broken planks and a piece of plywood. A large propane tank bobbed along moving much faster than a casual kayaker. The sound of rushing water felt unsettling, and Cooley’s thoughts shouted, stay in the bank, you son of a bitch. A restless night and jittery headache tightened the back of his neck. The appreciation for the place once so alluring had completely soured. Walking back up the slope of the yard to the house, he wondered how there could be such crazy people in the world who’d build so close to so much potential danger. The wind had blown hard, and when the wind blew like that, the electricity would go out. The night before, he had caught up tap water in five-gallon buckets which now sat on the kitchen floor. He hated not taking a bath every day, and the stored water usually set him at ease. That morning, with the river coming up, the buckets seemed foolishly in the way. He tried to practice blues licks on his electric guitar. Usually he could lose himself in his music, and playing and singing would soothe him. Now his thoughts continually shifted out the window. A doghouse joggled by. Then a picnic table. The creek side of the house didn’t appear menacing, but the river, normally content to stay in its bed, now licked over the bank. The current at the edge appeared deceivingly calm, like a pond, but farther out debris continued to flow. About noon he pushed a stick into the soggy ground to mark the edge of the river’s climb. Cooley’s fingers stopped cooperating with guitar strings, and he put on a DVD. Halfway into the movie the phone rang, and he jerked to his feet. Kemper Lee, a friend who knew he didn’t have cable news, gave him [End Page 67] a flood report. It would be midnight before the river crested. Yes, there was a chance it could come into the house. It had in the nineties; it had in the seventies. It had swept the entire bottom away back in the forties. Kemper Lee would come over to help. Good. Cooley surveyed the contents of the house for what he would lose. Then started putting things on tables, countertops, chairs, and the couch. If the water came in he could save things from getting wet. Move everything off the floor. He had heard of people doing this. Everything higher. The more precious it was, the higher it would go. He moved books from lower to higher shelves. In the bedroom he stacked stuff on the bed. In the living room, he picked the Christmas cactus up off the floor, placed it on the counter top, and gently edged it to the center where it would be safer. It was past full red bloom but still beautiful. Somehow, he had kept it alive all these years. At first it almost died, but he checked books out of the library and learned how to tend it and had very carefully transported it from place to place each time he moved. Outside, he pushed another stick in the ground. His dog and the neighbor’s dog followed, sniffing the strange changing world. One, then the other, stopped to lap river water growing in the yard. Where was Kemper Lee? He should be here by now. And why hadn’t Bob, his neighbor, come over to show his concern for the river? Neighbors used to stand by each other no matter what happened. But times had changed. Gone with the wind. Not coming back anytime soon. Especially, not in these kind of times. But can’t Bob see the river would take his stuff next? Cooley could figure why Bob hadn’t come over. Bob was a drinking man...

Calculating guitar sound radiation by forward-propagating measured forced-oscillation patterns

The radiation patterns of 32 guitars are investigated. Therefore, the top and back plates are measured using a 121-microphone array, back-propagating the recorded sound field onto the guitar top and back plates. Both, the eigenvalues and the forced oscillation patterns are measured, the latter by plucking the guitar strings for all possible notes. For each note, the forced-oscillation radiation pattern is calculated for 20 partials up to 4 kHz. These radiation patterns are then forward-propagated into the surrounding space around the guitar. Considerable differences appear between the different guitars within the same frequency region in terms of shape and intensity. Also, for similar frequencies, different patterns may appear, depending on the string and note played.

Allergic nickel dermatitis caused by playing the guitar: case report and assessment of nickel release from guitar strings

Allergic nickel dermatitis caused by playing the guitar: case report and assessment of nickel release from guitar strings

Local probing of propagating acoustic waves in a gigahertz echo chamber

In the same way that micro-mechanical resonators resemble guitar strings and drums, Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) resemble the sound these instruments produce, but moving over a solid surface rather than through air. In contrast with oscillations in suspended resonators, such propagating mechanical waves have not before been studied near the quantum mechanical limits. Here, we demonstrate local probing of SAW with a displacement sensitivity of 30amRMS/sqrt(Hz) and detection sensitivity on the single-phonon level after averaging, at a frequency of 932MHz. Our probe is a piezoelectrically coupled Single Electron Transistor, which is sufficiently fast, non-destructive and localized to let us track pulses echoing back and forth in a long acoustic cavity, self-interfering and ringing the cavity up and down. We project that strong coupling to quantum circuits will allow new experiments, and hybrids utilizing the unique features of SAW. Prospects include quantum investigations of phonon-phonon interactions, and acoustic coupling to superconducting qubits, for which we present favourable estimates.

기타 음 합성을 위한 최적의 SIMD기반 매니코어 프로세서 구현

프로세서는 더 이상 동작 주파수를 높이는 방법이 아닌 다수의 프로세서를 집적하는 멀티프로세서로 기술 발전이 이루어지고 있다. 최근 2, 4, 8개의 프로세서 코어를 넘어 64, 128개 이상의 프로세서를 집적한 대규모 데이터 처리용 고성능 프로세서들이 개발되고 있다. 본 논문에서는 기타의 음 합성을 위한 최적의 매니코어 프로세서 구조를 제안한다. 기존의 연구에서는 하나의 기타 현에 하나의 프로세싱 엘리먼트(processing element, PE)를 할당하여 음을 합성하였으나, 본 논문은 하나의 기타 현에 여러 개의 PE를 할당하고 각각의 경우에 대해 시스템 성능, 시스템 면적 효율 및 에너지 효율을 평가하였다. 샘플링율이 44.1kHz, 양자화 비트 16인 기타 음을 사용하여 모의 실험한 결과, 시스템 면적 효율은 PE 수가 24개, 에너지 효율은 PE 수가 96개일 때 각각 최적의 효율을 보였다. 또한, 최적의 매니코어 프로세서를 이용하여 합성한 결과 합성음은 원음과 스펙트럼에서 매우 유사하였다. 더불어, 음 합성에 가장 많이 사용되는 TI TMS320C6416보다 시스템 면적에서 1,235배, 에너지 효율에서 22배의 향상을 보였다. Improving operating frequency of processors is no longer today's issues; a multiprocessor technique which integrates many processors has received increasing attention. Currently, high-performance processors that integrate 64 or 128 cores are developing for large data processing over 2, 4, or 8 processor cores. This paper proposes an optimal many-core processor for synthesizing guitar sounds. Unlike the previous research in which a processing element (PE) was assigned to support one of guitar strings, this paper evaluates the impacts of mapping different numbers of PEs to one guitar string in terms of performance and both area and energy efficiencies using architectural and workload simulations. Experimental results show that the maximum area energy efficiencies were achieved at PEs=24 and 96, respectively, for synthesizing guitar sounds with sampling rate of 44.1kHz and 16-bit quantization. The synthesized sounds were very similar to original guitar sounds in their spectra. In addition, the proposed many-core processor was 1,235 and 22 times better than TI TMS320C6416 in area and energy efficiencies, respectively.

AUTOMATIC GUITAR TUNING CASE

An automatic guitar tuning case is a tuning system to automatically, synchronously, accurately and rapidly turn an acoustic guitar or electrical guitar with no requirement of modifying the guitar. It has six optical transducers to respectively detect and convert the vibration of associated six guitar strings to electric signals. A microcontroller unit compares the frequencies of these input signals to selected tones, and then controls six electric tuning wrenches for tuning the six guitar strings. The automatic tuning guitar system also consists of a control panel for a user to preset and select tuning pattern, operate and monitor the system. It only needs to take a few seconds to tune a guitar by this tuning device.

Acoustical differences between treble guitar strings of different tension (i.e., gauge).

The thickness of a guitar string has a complicated effect on the overall sound of the instrument, affecting the degree of inharmonicity in the tone. [Fletcher et al., (1991).] Different players also select strings of certain tensions because of their perceived qualities such as brightness and loudness. The acoustical differences in the sound and sustain of plucked nylon guitar strings as a function of string tension were measured in an effort to quantify these differences. The open string, fifth-fret, and 12th-fret harmonic waveforms of the treble (G, B, and E) strings were studied for sets of strings with different tensions. Only treble strings, made of a monofilament pure nylon strand, were studied. The levels of the first ten harmonics relative to the level of the fundamental were measured for each sound on each string, as well as the duration of the sustain in each case. Patterns in the sustain times and spectra as a function of string gauge will be presented. [Research supported by the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.]

Estimation of steel guitar strings corrosion by artificial neural network

The purpose of this work was to estimate the corrosion of steel guitar strings in the artificial sweat solution by applying artificial neural network (ANN). Measurements were conducted during 1, 2, 3 and 4 weeks. The results were used for training the most appropriate model of ANN. For evaluating the method efficiency, the comparison between measured data has been compared to values estimated by ANN. The high correlation coefficient and low mean absolute error between measured and estimated output values were observed. Therefore it can be concluded that ANN are promising tool for estimation of corrosion processes.

Study of microstructure and corrosion kinetic of steel guitar strings in artificial sweat solution

Corrosion processes of strings on musical instruments occur frequently. Such processes significantly influence sound quality, but also human health because metals may provoke skin allergy. Therefore, in this study the corrosion process of six guitar strings and metal ions release associated with nickel allergy was monitored after immersion in sweat solution for 28 days. Dissolution of metal ions was measured as a function of time, and the changes of the samples after 28 days were studied by SEM/EDS. The results have shown that the amounts of dissolved metal ions in corrosive solution are decreasing in the following order: Fe3+<Sn2+<Mn2+<Si4+<Ni2+. The corrosion of electric guitar strings in artificial sweat solution was determined by the solubility of samples. The electric guitar strings E6, A5 and D4 corrosion kinetic in artificial sweat followed parabolic rate relation, while g3, h2 and e1 strings followed linear rate relation. After the four weeks of monitoring, the quantities of the nickel eluted ions did not exceed the limits prescribed by standard regulations. Therefore such items do not present a threat to human health.

Metal ion release from electric guitar strings in artificial sweat

The aim of this study was to monitor the dissolution of metal ions from electric guitar strings. For characterization of investigated strings, two independent methods of analysis were chosen: ICP-OES and AAS. Electric guitar strings consisted of two separate parts: Sn-plated steel core wire which was hexagonal in cross section and Ni-plated steel wrap which was round in cross section. Dissolution of Ni 2+, Mn 2+, Si 4+, Sn 2+ and Fe 3+ ions from electric guitar strings E6 and D4 were measured as a function of time in artificial sweat solution, at temperature of 37 °C according to the EN 1811:1999 standard test procedure. The determination of the amount of the metal ions released in the corrosive solutions was carried out by means of inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES). The mechanism of metal ions eluted in artificial sweat is discussed. The concentrations of dissolved metal ions in corrosive solution from E6 and D4 strings are decreasing in the following order: Fe 3+ > Sn 2+ > Mn 2+ > Si 4+ > Ni 2+. Among all investigated metal ions, nickel is far the most allergenic. Since the amounts of the eluted Ni 2+ did not exceed 0.5 μg cm −2 week −1, the investigated electric guitar strings should not induce contact dermatitis.

Hands on and homemade coupled oscillators for Project Listen Up.

A coupled pendulum oscillator experiment recently developed within the U.S. Naval Academy Physics Department seems a possible candidate for the Project Listen Up initiative. A plexiglass frame supported by four legs suspends two 500 g masses 30 cm below by two chains of paper clips each, meeting in the shape of a V on either bob. A light spring (k=3.64 N/m) connects the two, completing the coupled oscillator system. Displacement of the oscillators was measured using Pasco motion sensors, a Vernier LabPro unit, and a laptop. LOGGERPRO and MATHEMATICA software helped compare theory with experiment. However, one does not need these resources to experiment with coupled oscillators—it can be improvised using ordinary household materials for young students! An inexpensive wooden picture frame with islet screws supports pendulums using two Dixie cups filled with sand or coins as masses. The possibilities for learning seem endless! A simple stopwatch, meter stick, fulcrum, and measuring cups are incorporated in experimental and theoretical comparisons, including the periods of normal modes. Students can explore density through balancing masses with volumes of water. Demonstrating beat frequencies from mistuned xylophone bars or guitar strings conveys a subtlety of the experiment without overpowering the young minds of future scientists.

Detection of extracellular potentials using a mechanical-based nanosensor

Event Abstract Back to Event Detection of extracellular potentials using a mechanical-based nanosensor Implantable high density microelectrode arrays hold enormous promise as tools for understanding neuronal circuits in vivo. At present, a limitation of this technology arises in signal extraction from the recording site to the macro-scale. This is typically carried out via lithographically defined wiring. In order to minimise tissue damage, higher density electrode arrays will require narrower wiring with submicron dimensions. However, the effects of impedance and capacitive coupling prohibit an arbitrary reduction in size. Realising ultra-high resolution extracellular recordings over large volumes will thus require novel methods of signal extraction. Here we present a new paradigm that allows parallel signal extraction from potentially hundreds to thousands of electrodes through a single output, by transducing signals in the frequency-domain. Our approach relies on the use of nanoscale, piezoelectrically coupled transducers known as D-NEMS (depletion-mode nanoelectromechanical systems). A key feature of these devices is that they exhibit mechanical resonance effects; their precise structural dimensions determine their characteristic vibrational frequencies. The piezoelectric effect enables conversion of an electric field into mechanical strain. The devices we constructed were beam structures of different lengths, analogous to the strings on a guitar. Each beam was coupled to a different microelectrode, and as they were of varying lengths, they exhibited dissimilar resonant frequencies when driven in the RF range. Much like the tones of guitar strings can be modulated by stress, a voltage applied through the coupled microelectrode can be used to shift the vibrational frequency of the piezoelectric beam resonator by altering the tension within it. This presentation discusses our early attempts to harness this effect to develop a nanoscale, mechanical-based detection scheme for extracellular potentials. In a proof-of-concept experiment, the mechanical displacement of the resonators were measured in parallel using laser interferometry. All mechanical transduction thus occurred via a single, optical signal transmission path. As the fundamental frequency of each microelectrode-coupled resonator is set much further apart than the variation that occurs during signal detection, each of the microelectrodes is addressable. The mechanical response is linear, and thus microelectrode signals can be transduced back into an amplitude post-extraction. Extracellular action potentials in the thoracic ganglia of the locust were successfully recorded using the frequency modulation scheme, with our devices coupled to multi-channel neural probes. In addition, multiplexed voltage detection was demonstrated with two recording electrodes coupled to separate piezoelectric resonators. Finally, the response of the system was systematically characterised, and its limitations and prospects for improvement are presented. Conference: Computational and systems neuroscience 2009, Salt Lake City, UT, United States, 26 Feb - 3 Mar, 2009. Presentation Type: Poster and Short Oral Presentation Topic: Poster and Short Oral Presentations Citation: (2009). Detection of extracellular potentials using a mechanical-based nanosensor. Front. Syst. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: Computational and systems neuroscience 2009. doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.06.2009.03.304 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 04 Feb 2009; Published Online: 04 Feb 2009. Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Google Google Scholar PubMed Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Les Paul, Chasing Sound! (review)

Les Paul, Chasing Sound! DVD. Produced and directed by John Paulson. Port Washington, NY: Koch Vision, 2007. KOC-DV-6432. $24.99. Les Paul's name has been part of popular culture since the 1930s. He is a pioneer of modern recording techniques, a co-creator of one of the world's greatest electric guitars, and a celebrated musician. And at ninety-three, he still gets out of the house to play a weekly show at the Club Iridium in New York, always to a packed house. John Paulson's Les Paul, Chasing Sound! is a long-overdue documentary, made more valuable by the footage from Les's recent Iridium shows that Paulson interweaves with older performance footage from TV and radio, stills, and recordings. film, enhanced with commentary by Les Paul, attempts to convey both sides of Les: the musician and the inventor. During the course of the film the camera takes us on a tour of his home and shows off his workshop, several rooms stacked and cluttered with electronic gear in different stages of assembly and disassembly. His original projects are there: the eight-track recorder (eight tape machines stacked on one another), as well as a compost heap of mixing boards, amps, radios, tubes, wires, and, of course, guitars. Les describes how, as a boy, growing up in Waukesha, Wisconsin, he was always curious about the mechanics of the world around him. He took things apart to see how they worked and often rebuilt them in better ways. This curiosity extended to his musical life. When he was a teenager playing guitar and harmonica and singing at a local store, he was told that his guitar was not loud enough. So he experimented with amplification by putting his father's phonograph needle on the guitar and wiring it through a telephone receiver. It did amplify his guitar, but the vibrations caused too much feedback. That is when he started tinkering with what was to become his life-changing creation: a solid-body amplified guitar. He put guitar strings on a piece of metal railroad track because of its size and density. It's so dense and free of any vibrations that I don't want, I would get this sustain and this clear sound, he said. He put a telephone receiver under the strings, played it through his mother's radio, and got a sound that pleased him. But Les said his mother told him no one would want to hear him play a railroad track. Les was also a driven musician who worked his way up to playing pop hillbilly music on the radio in Chicago and it was there that he was exposed to jazz. He was influenced by artists such as Art Tatum and Louis Armstrong, and especially by jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. Les said that his own fleet, clear, and melodic picking style owes a lot to Django. During a tour of Les's house in Mahwah, New Jersey, he shows off a treasured item from his collection: one of Django's Selmer/Maccaferri guitars. Les said that he moved to New York around 1938, got on a radio show, and jammed at night in Harlem with musical lions such as Lester Young and Art Tatum. To this moment, when I'm playing and an idea comes to me, it came from (people like) Art Tatum or Coleman Hawkins, he said. That's where I learned In the meantime, he continued to design his amplified guitar, forming the core from a solid 4 x 4 piece of wood for density and sustain, and gluing halves of a real guitar on either side for aesthetic appearances. Les said he labored on it-with permission-in the Epiphone guitar factory on Sundays. Around 1941 he perfected his invention, which he nicknamed The Log. Les started badgering the Gibson guitar company to develop his electric guitar but, he said, they treated him as if he were a character peddling a broomstick with a pickup on it. In the early 40s, Bing Crosby-with whom Les was working in Los Angeles-gave Les an early tape recorder. Les said that right away he saw the possibilities of adding recording heads, recording additional tape tracks, and synchronizing their replay. …

Guitar Strings as Standing Waves: A Demonstration

An undergraduate student's first exposure to modern atomic theory tends to start with Bohr's model of the atom. This familiar introduction to atomic structure also marks a general chemistry student's first foray into waves. Many popular chemistry textbooks illustrate the concept of a standing wave in the development of the modern quantum model by using the phrase �as seen on a guitar string�. In these illustrations, the wave itself is often small and difficult to discern. The same phenomenon, however, can be easily and audibly observed. This demonstration uses an acoustic guitar to produce three unique harmonic vibrations, each of which is representative of a standing wave and illustrates the concept of quantization. Manipulation of the guitar string to produce a standing wave is pervasive in popular music and is audibly recognizable. Lightly placing a finger on the 12th, 7th, or 5th fret and strumming any one or all six strings can produce an audible example of a standing wave on a guitar. This corresponds to a standing wave with 1, 2, or 3 nodes, respectively. Attempting to induce a node at other points on a guitar string does not generate a standing wave, due to destructive interference, thus no audible tone is produced.

Scientists Develop Method to Sort Nanotubes by Diameter

In an exciting advance in nanotechnology imaging, Rice University scientists have discovered a way to use standard optical microscopes and video cameras to film individual carbon nanotubes—tiny cylinders of carbon no wider than a strand of DNA. The movies show that nanotubes can be “plucked” by individual molecules of water and made to bend like guitar strings.“Nanotubes are fairly stiff, and when they are long enough, the bombardment by the surrounding water molecules makes them bend in harmonic shapes, just like the string of a guitar or a piano,” said lead researcher Matteo Pasquali, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and chemistry and codirector of Rice's Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory.Pasquali said the analogy with stringed instruments does not fit completely with the nanoscale world. Unlike the guitar string, for example, the carbon nanotube is plucked randomly in many places at the same time. Also, it cannot resonate like the guitar string, because the nanotube has too little mass, and its vibrations die quickly because it is surrounded by viscous liquid.Carbon nanotubes are hollow, hair-like strands of pure carbon that are 100 times stronger than steel, but weigh only one sixth as much. Nanotubes are 1 nm, or one billionth of a meter, wide. Human hair, by comparison, is about 80,000 nm wide.Nanotubes tend to clump together. To isolate individual tubes, Pasquali and doctoral student Rajat Duggal, now a research engineer at General Electric, put clumps of tubes into a mixture of water and a soap-like surfactant, sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS). When the nanotube clumps were broken apart with ultrasonic sound waves, the SDS surrounded the individual nanotubes and held them apart, in the same way laundry detergent surrounds and separates dirt particles in the wash.In order to see individual nanotubes with a standard optical microscope like those found in most biological laboratories, Pasquali and Duggal added a common red fluorescent dye that is often used to stain cells. The dye, which attached itself to the SDS surrounding each nanotube, glowed brightly enough to be seen under a microscope.“I had been working on fluorescence visualization of DNA, and other students in the lab were working on nanotubes,” Duggal recalled. “A colleague was disposing of nanotube suspensions after an experiment, and I asked them to spare me a vial so I could try them with an optical microscope. I thought of decorating the nanotubes with a fluorescent dye that would prefer to be with the SDS rather than the water, and when I looked under the microscope—to my delight—I found bright, dancing nanotubes.”Duggal said scientists have used electron microscopes to observe the underdamped vibrations of nanotubes in vacuum, but his and Pasquali's technique gives scientists the ability to see how nanotubes behave in liquids in real time.Pasquali and Duggal videotaped dozens of nanotubes at 30 frames per second. A frame-by-frame analysis of the tapes revealed harmonic bending in several nanotubes that were 3 to 5 mm long and showed that the measured amplitude of the bending motion is consistent with earlier predictions of Rice materials scientist Boris Yakobson, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of chemistry.Pasquali said the method works with other surfactants and it may be useful for life scientists who want to find out how nanotubes interact with cells, biomolecules, and other biological entities.“Our method doesn't provide the sensitivity or precision you get with the infrared, single-nanotube imaging methods developed last year by Rice chemist Bruce Weisman and doctoral student Dmitri Tsyboulski, but the equipment we need is less expensive,” Pasquali said. “It's akin to the difference between playing a Stradivarius and playing a common violin.”The video is available at www.rice.edu/media/nanotubevideo.html.The research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

Experimenting with Guitar Strings

What follows is a description of a simple experiment developed in a nonmathematical general education science course on sound and light for fine arts students in which a guitar is used with data collection hardware and software to verify the properties of standing waves on a string.

James's Birdcage/Hitchcock's Birds

Like a bird on the wire Like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried, in my way, to be free. —Leonard Cohen Leonard Cohen's 1969 signature lyric posits a conundrum about freedom: I have tried to be free in my vocalizations, sings the Keatsian bird/drunk, but my freedom to sing has coincided with linearity, restriction, conformity. In this chestnut of poetic complaint, form and the constrictions of the poetic instrument ("wire" referring to guitar strings) contend with spontaneity in the reproduction of the poet's song and soul, his "freedom." Cohen's "I have tried" and "in my way" notwithstanding (those clichés of contemporary victimization), his image of a bird on a wire symptomatizes what I want to define as a particular circumstance of the condition of modernity. I will characterize this circumstance as a dually complicit and conflicted relation between the simulativeness and the putative freedom of the subject, in the vein of the more the subject is redoubled, the more mobile it becomes. This relation rests upon an ambiguation of the ideology underlying what Herb Schneidau has definitively explored in Sacred Discontent as the alienation of the modern Western subject—a double alienation in that it compounds the alienation of the subject in culture and inevitably represents it as the alienation of culture from nature, or the inviolate gap of the real existing between the social and the imaginary broached by modern self-consciousness (1–49). In drawing out this relation, I will be moving between two figures and two works, Henry James and Alfred Hitchcock; In the Cage, James's deeply weird, voyeuristic novella of 1898 and The Birds, Hitchcock's [End Page 45] 1963 epic of avian mayhem and the second of the trilogy of films—sandwiched between Psycho and Marnie—devoted to possessive mothers, bad daughters, and generally possessed adults. Why James and Hitchcock? For starters, it is sometimes difficult to tell them apart, at least in profile. Both are portly modernists, bookends to an epoch, at least in the case of James on the front end if we follow Hugh Kenner's characterization of him in The Pound Era as the era's absent father, encountering the young Ezra and Dorothy in London while on a walk with his niece "toward the evening of a gone world," a meeting that Kenner characterizes as follows: "Mr. Pound! . . . " in the searching voice, torch for unimagined labyrinths; and on, to the effect of presenting his niece Margaret; whereafter Mr. Pound presented Mr. James to his wife Dorothy; and the painter's eye of Dorothy Pound, née Shakespear, "took in," as James would have phrased it, Henry James. "A fairly portly figure." Fifty years later, under an Italian sky, the red waistcoat seemed half chimerical—"that may be imagination!"—but let us posit it; Gautier wore such a garment to the Hernani première, that formal declaration (1830) of art's antipathy to the impercipient, and James would have buttoned it for this outing with didactic deliberation. (4) For Kenner, whose treatise on the era as book is modeled on Ulysses, thus the implicit comparison between the didactic, "stately, plump Buck Mulligan" of the novel's introit and the didactic, portentous Henry James shepherding in modernity and seeing out the nineteenth century, James's "unimagined labyrinths" conspire with "art's antipathy to the impercipient" to produce a body of work that combines obsessive reflexivity and compulsive attention to detail. We might also say the same of Hitchcock films from, roughly, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1939 version) on, in proximate relation to the latter epoch of cinematic modernity as James stands in relation to the earlier epoch of literary modernity. More pointedly, James and Hitchcock reflect in unprecedented ways on the relation I have just introduced: detail and labyrinth, both signature elements of their collective opus, or a specificity...

The Magic Sun: A Film (review)

Reviewed by: The Magic Sun: A Film Eric Hung Phill Niblock. The Magic Sun: A Film. DVD. With Sun Ra & His Solar Arkestra. [N.p.]: Atavistic Video, 2005. DJ-861. $14.99. Sun Ra (1914–1993) is at once a legendary and an obscure figure in the history of jazz. He is revered by aficionados of "avant-garde" jazz, but—unlike Ornette Coleman or Cecil Taylor—he appears irregularly in jazz scholarship and jazz history textbooks. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, he first attracted attention as a mainstream jazz pianist and arranger in Chicago during the late 1940s. He played in Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra (1946–47), Gene Wright's Dukes of Swing (1947–48), and briefly accompanied Coleman Hawkins. At around the same time, Sun Ra became interested in the history of ancient Egypt. His extensive examination of this civilization led him to develop what Graham Lock has dubbed his "Astro Black Mythology," an aesthetic and political philosophy that attempts to use "intergalactic" rhetoric to revise "white"/established accounts of African American history, heighten awareness of achievements of blacks throughout history, and reconnect African Americans to their African past. Inevitably, this philosophy deeply impacted Sun Ra's music. In the mid- to late-1950s, he adopted futuristic costumes for performances and gave titles related to outer space and Egypt to numerous compositions. He also began to emphasize percussion in his music by using multiple drummers in his "Arkestra" and encouraging other band members to play assorted percussion instruments. Additionally, he drew upon Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and expanded his music's tonal and timbral palettes. Sun Ra's move to New York in 1961 marked the beginning of what several critics call his "free-jazz" period. His music of the next decade emphasizes timbral variety and experimentation, and includes many passages of collective improvisation. From the 1970s to his final concerts in the early 1990s, Sun Ra continued to use and extend the techniques he developed during the 1960s, but he also reincorporated elements of conventional jazz into his music. At the height of Sun Ra's "free-jazz" period, experimental filmmaker and minimalist composer Phill Niblock (1933– ) made a seventeen-minute black-and-white film of "Sun Ra and His Solar Arkestra." Entitled The Magic Sun, this entire film consists of extreme close-ups of "Arkestra" members playing three of Sun Ra's mid-1960s compositions: "Celestial Fantasy," "Shadow World," and "Strange Strings." It is shot with bright backlighting, and is shown in negative. The result resembles, in some ways, a medley of increasingly hazy ultrasound videos; what one sees is a completely black background with intermittently decipherable silhouettes. Like many of Niblock's later films, The Magic Sun explores the abstract movements of work rather than the workers themselves or the context of the work. Specifically, viewers see fingers plucking guitar strings and pressing saxophone keys, mouths blowing into mouthpieces, and hands holding drumsticks. However, they won't get any sense of the musician's personalities; a complete face appears only a couple of times near the beginning of the film. Additionally, the film's visual component contains few clues about the circumstances of the presentation. The viewer cannot know whether the visuals are derived from a live performance, a rehearsal, or something staged specifically for the film. Finally, since the images are only marginally related to the soundtrack (e.g., the faster cuts and movements tend to be combined with the more active music), the film reveals little about the actual sounds the musicians on-screen are producing. [End Page 181] The musicians' movements simply don't match the soundtrack. Some viewers clearly treasure this film's extreme abstractness. This reviewer, however, found the film to be rather boring. It simply lacks the variety that one hears in the music. In addition to The Magic Sun, this DVD contains four "philosophical proclamations" that Sun Ra recorded in the mid-1960s. The first, entitled "Statement," is a four-minute "intergalactic autobiography." The other three, all accompanied by music, are recitations of poems from his collection, The Immeasurable Equation. This fifteen-minute bonus, accompanied by photos of Sun Ra and members of his Arkestra, includes previous unavailable material, and is...

Acoustic guitar assembly

An acoustic guitar having a resin laminate soundboard with a bracing pattern specifically configured to provide the non-wooden soundboard with qualitites resembling traditional wooden soundboards. The soundboard is made from a relatively inexpensive resin laminate material in order to reduce the manufacturing cost of the acoustic guitar. The bracing pattern located on the underside of the soundboard stiffens the non-wooden soundboard at particular locations in order to permit a required degree of vibration for acoustic purposes while preventing damaging flexure caused by the forces of the tensioned guitar strings.

Multimedia keyboard with instrument playing device

A multimedia keyboard with instrument playing device comprising a case, a connector and flexible protruding plate mounted on one end of the case. A protruding plate can be inserted into an available slot in the multimedia keyboard, providing a signal connection and a flexible clip. Playing elements such as guitar strings, piano keys, or a drumhead are mounted on the exterior of the case. Several series of flexible conducting elements connected to the playing elements are mounted within the case. When the playing elements are struck or plucked, the conducting elements will deform in direct proportion to the amount of force that has been applied. One signal pickup circuit board including several carbon film resistance plates is mounted on the top or bottom of each flexible conducting elements. When a flexible conducting elements deforms, the changing area of contact between its deformed portion and the carbon film resistance plates can be used to generate analog signals in direct proportion to the amount of force applied to the playing elements. These signals allow the computer to generate sound length, tone, and volume corresponding to those of the playing elements.