On the Synthesis of Guitar Plucks

Summary Severa ld ifferent approaches are described to the problem of synthesising the pluck response of a guitar, starting from information about string properties and the input admittance at the bridge of the guitar. Synthesis can be carried out in the frequency domain, the time domain, or via modal superposition. Within these categories there are further options. A range of methods is developed and implemented, and their performance on a particular test case compared. The two most successful methods are found to be modal synthesis using the first-order method, and frequency-domain synthesis. Of the two, frequency domain synthesis proves to be faster. A significant conclusion is that the coupled string/body modes of a normal classical guitar do not show “veering” behaviour except at low frequencies, so that it is important to use a synthesis method which incorporates fully the effect of string damping: methods based on first finding undamped modes give poor results.

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