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Resonant Frequency and Musical Instrument Design
Any given resonator vibrates more readily or efficiently at certain characteristic frequencies, called resonant frequencies, than at other frequencies. Musical instrument designers shape instruments to resonate best at certain frequencies, and damp the others as much as possible. That’s why trumpets, French horns, and saxophones are shaped so differently.
A few of the variables that determine the instrument’s resonant frequencies and, therefore, the instrument’s overall sound, include:
- Size of the instrument
- Shape of the instrument
- Material the instrument is made of
- Internal construction of the instrument
Your brain responds best to the uncomplicated vibrations that simple shapes generate. Simply shaped soundmakers create tones that you can make sense of. If you strip away frets and valves and tuning mechanisms from musical instruments, you find that they have pretty simple shapes compared with other soundmakers in nature, such as your average poplar tree or Niagara Falls, which generate noise instead of pure tones.