Sympathetic Strings, Partials, Nodes, and Sitars.

Gary Morrison wrote:
>I really think it's fair to say that all of the common string and wind
>instruments have partials at frequencies sufficiently close to harmonics
>that, for the vast majority of musical purposes, they can be considered
>practically harmonic.

Do you still have this information? How close is close?

Does anyone know how these discrepencies affect sympathetic strings?

Also, looking at good Sitars, I noticed that the sympathetic strings each
have their own nut exactly beneath the fret that sounds the note they
amplify. The sympathetic string's bridge is right beneath the main bridge.
It seems to me that these SHOULD be the nodal points for that note on the
instrument. I can't imagine the air conducting the sound from one string to
the other. Hundreds of years of design can't be that far wrong. What am I
missing?

-Glen Peterson


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> I believe that sympathetic strings do indeed work by transferring
> the energy through the air. As a simple experiment, sing into a string
> on a guitar, and you can easily set the string to vibrating
> (sympathetically) with your voice.

In that particular case I'm almost certain that would gets the guitar
string to vibrate is the sound waves from your voice vibrating the
soundboard, which vibrates the strings. FAR less, I believe you'll find is
a result of the air directly exciting the strings themselves.

Try it with a solid-body guitar on headphones and I'd be surprised if
you hear much. (I've never tried it myself, so I may be surprised as
well.)

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