ItConfStrikeNote.pdf (52.85 kB)
On the strike note of bells
online resource
posted on 2006-10-20, 09:52 authored by Gerry Swallowe, R. PerrinA strike note, characteristic of the particular bell, is heard when a bell is struck. It is observed that the pitch of
this note sometimes does not correspond to the frequency of any one of the bell’s normal modes. The origin of
this strike note has been a subject of controversy for over 100 years. Previous empirical investigations have
mainly made use of musically trained listeners and real or recorded bell sounds. The short duration of the actual
strike note and possible influence of musical training on observations may invalidate the conclusions of previous
investigators. In this work use has been made of computer generated simulated bell sounds and untrained
listeners. It is demonstrated that a strike note may be isolated by beating with a pure test tone and this technique
is used to investigate 28 bell-like sounds using a total of 60 listeners. It is concluded that virtual pitch theory
provides the best method of predicting the presence or absence of a strike note and its frequency, but that it does
not work in every case.
History
School
- Science
Department
- Physics
Pages
54117 bytesCitation
SWALLOWE and PERRIN, 2001. On the strike note of bells. IN: Proceedings on the International Symposium on Musical Acoustics, Davide Bonsi, Diego Gonzalez, Domenico Stanzial, Perugia, Italy pp 367-370Publication date
2001Notes
This is a refereed conference paper.ISBN
88-900646-0-9Language
- en