I'm curious about the mechanism of a guitar producing sound. Of course, I know once a string is plucked it vibrates in a superposition of several harmonics, but what I don't know is what happens next. The string vibrates, creating a pressure wave around it with the same frequencies as the ones it's vibrating with, these waves go into the sound hole, and then what?
How does a guitar string produce sound
acousticsoscillatorsresonancestringwaves
Best Answer
That's not correct. The string is too narrow to displace all that air. The string vibrates, and this string being coupled to the guitar's body, makes the body vibrate. This vibration gets transferred to the air inside, and that's where the resonant harmonics of the body comes to play. The sound you hear is a combination of the small sound of the string pluck, plus the amplified sound of air from the body through the sound hole .
If you think in terms of energy, the only input energy that goes into the system is the pluck you give. Without the guitar body, the string vibrates longer and dissipates energy through air slowly, making the sound and heat. But with the guitar body attached, the energy dissipates much faster because you have a guitar body and a whole lot more air vibrating. More air means better coupling with the atmosphere, and a louder sound detected by your ears. The trade-off for loudness is the duration of the sound, so energy is conserved.