String Theory: A Tale of the Violin

Overview

I have enjoyed playing the violin for 8 years. I’ve observed that many violinists prefer strings made from different materials. I have noticed that when I play, a gold Estring sounds very different from a tin Estring. I wanted to find out what casues this difference. For my investigation, I compared the tensions, lengths, spectrum analyzer images, and frequencies of the two types of strings. I concluded that none of these factors were the cause of the sound variation, so I investigated further. I then identified and measured the timbre of the two strings using a frequency analyze program. I was able to visually see that the difference in sound is caused by how the harmonics of each string vibrate. Some harmonics are more pronounced on the tin Estring, and others on the gold Estring. Finally, I wished to discover what characters of the string caused the harmonics to vibrate the way they do. I did this by testing a platinum Estring (which has similar characteristics and plating density to a gold Estring) and another brand’s tin Estring to confirm if the density of the plating material is what causes specific harmonics to be heard over others. Though I was excited to discover that different harmonics were more prominent in different string materials, I was unable to confirm whether the plating density causes the difference.