Viewing vibrating strings in front of monitor

[Alan W Deverell]

Richard & Others,

I agree that a conventional rubber band, while displaying fundamental
properties of a tensioned element, will not accurately represent the
STEEL string and the inherent inharmonicity etc. You could try a piece
of "O" ring material of small diameter (this can be bought from
engineering supply shops) - this is at least "round" and would not
abberate the effects like a flat or square section rubber band and NOT
have significant aerodynamic characteristics.

Ideally the string needs to be "HIT" (rather than plucked) with a felt
hammer if you are to invoke the "piano" response in the tensioned
element. The striking point would be significant.

It is probably much easier to adjust the resonance of the
string/band/o-ring to synchronize with the computer monitor than go
through the procedure of changing the VGA settings etc. and probably
more appropriate to use a fluorescent light anyway.

A fluorescent light with TWO tubes is normally set up to strike each
tube 180 deg out of phase with each other. This would then STROBE at
120HZ (or 100Hz in civilised places like New Zealand etc.):-)). Just
remove one tube to get 60Hz (or 50Hz).

AlanD (still trying to see what he can hear - and taking a fluorescent
tube home to try this out tonight on a real piano)

PS - Not much response to my posting about developing a REAL "Piano
Strobe Light"

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Richard Moody [mailto:remoody@easnet.net]
>Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 1998 1:07 AM
>To: aland@casa.co.nz
>Subject: Viewing vibrating strings in front of monitor
>
>
>Hi Alan
>	Thanks for the input.  While I am not sure about the
>freqs of monitor
>screens, I am sure that rubber bands is NOT a good model, as
>I suggested.
> They are flat, and it seems the flatness "warps" its plane and thus
>distorts the slow motion partial movements when viewed
>against a screen.
>
>It will be a while before I can get a piano wire stretched across the
>screen, but that is what I am aiming at.
>
>Richard Moody
>
>
>
>----------
>> From: Alan W Deverell <aland@casa.co.nz>
>> To: Piano Tech <pianotech@ptg.org>
>> Subject: FW: Inharmonicity
>> Date: Monday, August 24, 1998 4:30 PM
>>
>> Viewing a stretched and plucked rubber band under fluorescent
lights
>> and/or a Multiscan SVGA monitor sounds like a novel way to simulate
>> vibrational behavior in a tensional element ?
>>
>> By running various, 50~90Hz, vertical re-fresh frequencies a range
of
>> synchronous conditions could be simulated. Some "high-end" display
>> monitors even support vertical refresh frequencies above 100Hz.
>>
>> Warning - caution must be taken in adjusting the vertical refresh -
>> DON'T select settings that are NOT supported by your Graphics Card
or
>> Monitor - there are some monitor diagnostic utilities about which
may
>> be used to momentarily select various resolutions etc.
>>
>> AlanD