Analysis of Acoustic Guitar Strings

James Martin

Advisor: Dr. Victor Mansfield

When a guitar string is plucked in different areas of its length, the same pitch is produced, however, the note will have a different tone, or quality. With each pluck there are many different harmonics present in the waveform produced. A Fourier analysis is capable of mapping from the original function to a new function that is the sum of these harmonics. We are concerned with how the graphical differences seen when a guitar string is plucked at one of its ends, versus when a string is plucked at the middle of its length, correspond to the quality differences in the sound heard.