Resonance Chladni Soundboard Harpsichord Clavecin

A soundboard (or sounding board) is the surface of a

string instrument In musical instrument classification, string instruments, or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer strums, plucks, strikes or sounds the strings in varying manners. Musicians play some ...

that the strings vibrate against, usually via some sort of

bridge A bridge is a structure built to Span (engineering), span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or railway) without blocking the path underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, whi ...

. Depending on the instrument, it is also called a ''top'', ''top plate'', ''resonator'', ''table'', ''sound-table'', or ''belly''. It is usually made of a

softwood Scots pine, a typical and well-known softwood Softwood is wood from gymnosperm trees such as conifers. The term is opposed to hardwood, which is the wood from angiosperm trees. The main differences between hardwoods and softwoods is that the sof ...

, often

spruce A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' ( ), a genus of about 40 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal ecosystem, boreal (taiga) regions of the Northern hemisphere. ''Picea'' ...

Piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

guitar The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming ...

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and in modern forms is usually made of plastic, where early membranes were made of animal skin. ...

s, and many other stringed instruments incorporate soundboards. The resonant properties of the soundboard and the interior of the instrument greatly increase the

loudness In acoustics, loudness is the subjectivity, subjective perception of sound pressure. More formally, it is defined as the "attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which sounds can be ordered on a scale extending from quiet to loud". The relat ...

of the vibrating strings. "The sound board is probably the most important element of a guitar in terms of its influence on the quality of the instrument's tone ."Sloane, Irving (1989).
Classic Guitar Construction
', p.20. Bold Strummer. . "The sound board is the most important element in the guitar." The soundboard operates by the principle of forced vibration. The string gently vibrates the board, and despite their differences in size and composition, makes the board vibrate at exactly the same frequency. This produces the same sound as the string alone, differing only in

timbre In music, timbre (), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound of a musical note, sound or tone. Timbre distinguishes sounds according to their source, such as choir voices and musical instrument ...

. The string would produce the same amount of energy without the board present, but the greater surface area of the soundboard moves a greater volume of air, which produces a louder sound. "Generally, stiffer boards will give a brighter edge to the sound than softer, more flexible boards....A good, dry soundboard has a certain 'live' tone while a poor one will have a relatively dead response," which the

luthier A luthier ( ; ) is a craftsperson who builds or repairs string instruments. Etymology The word ' is originally French and comes from ''luth'', the French word for "lute". The term was originally used for makers of lutes, but it came to be ...

may test during construction by thumping the board and listening for "brighter, more noticeable ring ng so as to work the board "to the appropriate thinness". Soundboards are traditionally made of wood (see

tonewood Tonewood refers to specific wood varieties used for woodwind or acoustic stringed instruments. The word implies that certain species exhibit qualities that enhance acoustic properties of the instruments, but other properties of the wood such as ae ...

), though other materials are used. Skin or plastic are found on instruments in the

family, and

harpsichord A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a musical keyboard, keyboard. Depressing a key raises its back end within the instrument, which in turn raises a mechanism with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic that plucks one ...

makers have experimented with metal soundboards. Wooden soundboards, with the exclusion of those found on keyboard instruments, typically have one or more

sound hole A sound hole is an opening in the body of a stringed musical instrument, usually the upper sound board. Sound holes have different shapes: * Round in flat-top guitars and traditional bowl-back mandolins; * F-holes in instruments from the viol ...

s of various shapes. Round, oval, or

F-hole A sound hole is an opening in the body of a string instrument, stringed musical instrument, usually the upper Sound board (music), sound board. Sound holes have different shapes: * Round in flat-top guitars and traditional bowl-back mandolins; ...

s appear on many plucked instruments, such as

s and

mandolin A mandolin (, ; literally "small mandola") is a Chordophone, stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally Plucked string instrument, plucked with a plectrum, pick. It most commonly has four Course (music), courses of doubled St ...

s are usual in

violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

family instruments.

Lute A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck (music), neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lu ...

s commonly have elaborate

rosette Rosette is the French diminutive of ''rose''. It may refer to: Flower shaped designs * Rosette (award), a mark awarded by an organisation * Rosette (design), a small flower design *hence, various flower-shaped or rotational symmetric forms: ** R ...

s. More generally, any hard surface can act as a soundboard. An example is when someone strikes a

tuning fork A tuning fork is an acoustic resonator in the form of a two-pronged fork with the prongs ( ''tines'') formed from a U-shaped bar of elastic metal (usually steel). It resonates at a specific constant pitch when set vibrating by striking it ag ...

and holds it against a table top to amplify its sound.

Production and material

Wood for working a soundboard must be specially prepared. Ideally, it should be naturally dried. The natural drying process takes at least one year, but it is the only process that preserves the natural structure of the fibres and pores of the wood, which determine the resonance and frequency characteristics of the material. Not only is this process lengthy, but it is also expensive. Although it would be far quicker and cheaper to subject the wood to artificial drying, its quality would be compromised. The acoustic properties of an instrument are also influenced by the wood's cutting profile, the direction of its fibres and the lack of knots.

References

{{Authority control String instrument construction Guitar parts and accessories ca:Caixa de ressonància

Production and material

See also

References