The Bowed String
This project takes place within the Doksari framework. For more details, visit https://iwk.mdw.ac.at/doksari/.
| Project number: | FWF P34852-N |
| Project leader: | Dr. Vasileios Chatziioannou |
| Research facility: | Department of Music Acoustics (IWK) University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna |
| Team: | Vasileios Chatziioannou, Alessio Lampis, Ewa Matusiak, Alexander Mayer, Montserrat Pàmies-Vilà |
| Project start: | 01.04.2022 |
| Project end: | 30.09.2025 |
| Scientific areas: | 103002, Acoustics (55 %) 604024, Musicology (45 %) |
| Keywords: | music, acoustics, bowed-string instruments, music performance, sound synthesis |
| Project data: |
https://zenodo.org/records/10619541 (Dataset-Examination of the static and dynamic bridge force components of a bowed string) https://zenodo.org/records/10946413 (Data for Experimental Assessment of Bowed-String Transient Playability Limits) https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15341818 (Matlab code for simulating a bowed-string) |
Project Summary
The complex function of musical instruments has traditionally fascinated scientists and engineers. This resulted in a field of study, namely Music Acoustics, where sound generation by musical instruments is one of the main subjects. In this project, the focus lies on the bowed string. The interaction between a bow held by a musician and the string of a bowed-string instrument (such as a violin, viola, or cello) also taking into account any feedback from the instrument's body, has been under investigation over the past decades. However, there are still open questions regarding how the bow is causing the motion of the string.
Our research explores this interaction through two approaches: First, we use a robot arm to bow a monochord. This enables long-duration experiments with perfect repeatability—something impossible for human players—while eliminating any influence of the instrument body. Second, we use the gathered measurements to develop a physics-based computer algorithm that generates synthetic sounds matching the recorded ones.
This study's findings enhances our understanding of bowed-string instruments while offering practical applications. It may provide students and teachers with illustrative examples of sounds that result from specific bowing actions, could yield results that are of interest to instrument makers, and will also generate valuable research tools for future studies in Music Acoustics. Finally, the resulting algorithms may be used for sound synthesis applications within contemporary electroacoustic composition and sound design.
Publications
van Walstijn, Maarten; Chatziioannou, Vasileios, and Athanasopoulos, Nikolaos (2024)
"An explicit scheme for energy-stable simulation of mass-barrier collisions with contact damping and dry friction,"
in Proc. 8th IFAC Workshop on Lagrangian and Hamiltonian Methods for Nonlinear Control.
Pàmies-Vilà, Montserrat; Mayer, Alexander; Matusiak, Ewa, and Chatziioannou, Vasileios (2024)
"A method for the reproduction of cello bow kinematics using a robotic arm and motion capture,"
Acta Acustica 8(45). DOI↗
Lampis, Alessio; Mayer, Alexander, and Chatziioannou, Vasileios (2024)
"Assessing playability limits of bowed-string transients using experimental measurements,"
Acta Acustica 8(44). DOI↗
Lampis, Alessio; Mayer, Alexander, and Chatziioannou, Vasileios (2024)
"An experimental approach for comparing the influence of cello string type on bowed attack response,"
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America - Express Letters 4(11). DOI↗
Matusiak, Ewa and Chatziioannou, Vasileios (2024)
"Elasto-plastic friction modeling toward reconstructing measured bowed-string transients,"
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 156(2), 1135-1147. DOI↗
Chatziioannou, Vasileios; Pamies-Vila, Montserrat, and Hofmann, Alex (2024)
"Physics-based playability maps for single-reed woodwind instruments,"
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America - Express Letters 4, 033201. DOI↗
Mayer, Alexander and Lampis, Alessio (2024)
"A Versatile Monochord Setup: An Industrial Robotic Arm as Bowing and Plucking Device,"
IWK Tech Report 1-2024. DOI↗
Pamies-Vila, Montserrat; Matusiak, Ewa; Chatziioannou, Vasileios, and Mayer, Alexander (2023)
"A cello bowing playback device? Motion capture meets robotic arm,"
in 10th Convention of the European Acoustics Association, Forum Acusticum p. 2749-2756. DOI↗
Matusiak, Ewa and Chatziioannou, Vasileios (2023)
"A Comparison of Friction Models for Bow-String Interaction Based on Experimental Measurements,"
in Proceedings of the Stockholm Music Acoustics Conference 2023 SMAC 2023. pdf
Lampis, Alessio; Mayer, Alexander; Pamies-Vila, Montserrat, and Chatziioannou, Vasileios (2023) 
"Examination of the static and dynamic forces at the termination of a bowed string,"
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 153 (best student paper award), A198. DOI↗
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