Ancient Lithuanian Kanklės / Acoustics

Overtones

After shivering the 10th string (sound e¹) about a third from the end with a bone (just like folk players used to play), one can find 17 overtones. When you touch that string at the same place with the finger, overtones decrease to 13, and if you touch it in the middle with a bone, will be II overtones.

The construction of the higher sounds of overtones is similar. By vibrating one third of the 3rd string (sound e²) using bone, there were found 10, using fingers - 9, and using bone in the middle - only 7 overtones.

Pictures: the Spectrograms of the kanklės of Suvalkiečiai:

All the sizes given in Spectrograms are vertically proportional to logarithms of intensity of harmonic overtones, horizontals are equal to its vibration frequency. Zones, marked by diagonal lines and circled from the top - are non periodical frequency and intensity noises.

1. - e¹ (320 Hz) with a bone;

2. - e¹ (320 Hz) with the finger;

3. - e² (640 Hz) with a bone;

4. - e² (640 Hz) with the finger;

5. - e² (640 Hz) with a bone in the middle of the string;

Copyright © The Institute of Ethnomusic, 1996
Copyright © Romualdas APANAVIČIUS, 1996
Electronic publishing by Multimedia Center for Humanities, 1996