Page 42 - Summer 2010

and, as such, has been a slow process. Analytical modeling offers a useful tool to estimate the sensitivity of tonal parame- ters to proposed design changes and possibly shorten the design cycle. There is “sound at the end of the tunnel.”AT
References
1 J. W. Dickey, “The structural dynamics of the American five- string banjo,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 114, 2958–2966 (2003).
2 J. C. Bryner, “Stiff-string theory: Richard Feynman on piano tuning,” Physics Today 62, 46–49 (December 2009). This is a cute article describing a letter from Richard Feynman to his piano tuner in which he expounds on the stiffness of strings and their influence on tuning. See also: N. H. Fletcher and T. D.
The author with toys.
(Photo: Michael Ciesielski, Baltimore)
My friends laughed at me when I told them that I wanted to go into modeling as a career. Well here I am, only about 35 years out of graduate school and still holding true to my mantra: “If it has no possible use, it must be good science.” I did have a career doing useful work helping make sub- marines quiet for the Navy, and then a decade with Johns Hopkins University doing research. Altogether I have pub- lished about a hundred papers, mostly in structural vibra- tions. About a third of these were co-authored with the late Gideon Madanik. I spent an interesting year in 1983–84 as a Congressional Science Fellow, was chair of the Acoustical Society of America’s Membership Committee for almost a
Rossing, The Physics of Musical Instruments, 2nd Edition
(Springer, New York, 1998), Section 10.4.3.
3 J. Rae and T. D. Rossing, “Design aspects of the five string banjo”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 117, 2590(A) (2005).
4 T. R. Moore and L. A. Stephey, “Time-resolved studies of banjo
head motion,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 127, 1870(A) (2010).
5 It is not considered good practice to have the head resonance this close to a string resonance, as this seems to produce a very loud note—something like the dreaded “wolf tone” sometimes seen in other stringed instruments. Of course, with the banjo, getting rid of this is just a matter of adjusting the head tension with the tensioning nuts seen around the clamp ring in Fig. 1. Presto, you have moved the head resonance to wherever you
want it. Do not try this with your cello.
decade, and represented the Society and the American Institute of Physics in various international committees. I am now pretty much retired but still writing a few papers, tending an American Chestnut Foundation orchard on our farm in Davidsonville, Maryland, doing and teaching wood- turning, and, oh yes, I play banjo in a couple of local blue- grass bands.
The Banjo 41