Musical Instruments as Synchronized Systems

Most musical instrument families have nearly perfect harmonic overtone series, for example plucked, bowed, or wind instruments. However, when considering the complex geometry and nonlinear driving mechanisms many of these instruments have we would expect them to have very inharmonic overtone series. So to make musical instruments play notes that we accept as harmonic sounds, synchronization needs to occur to arrive at the perfect harmonic overtone series the instruments actually produce. The reasons for this synchronization are different in the singing voice, organs, saxophones or clarinets, violin bowing or in plucked stringed instruments. However, when examining the mechanisms of synchronization further, we find general rules and suitable algorithms to understand the basic behavior of these instruments.

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