HAW Hamburg
Abstract :
Other than classical Spanish guitars, flamenco guitars are
capable of projecting rapid beat sequences in
pronounced clarity. This relates to what musicians call a
fast guitar. This ask for fast attack but also for some kind of
damping in between beats, which may follow each other
densely by some ten milliseconds in a rasgueado.
Temporal features are investigated across guitars of both
types to understand whether the flamenco guitar differs
from the classical guitar in these aspects. The full data set
contains impulse responses for more than 60 valuable
reference guitars. Attack and decay are extracted from
bridge impulse responses and from playing open strings.
Additionally, a simple measure represents the speed of
sound development across the soundboard. This measure
is derived from multi-point impulse responses taken along
the soundboard. Populations of both types of guitars
strongly overlap in these temporal maps and the physics
seem to provide only part of the answer. Flamenco guitars
tend to be faster in the treble range when monitored by
means of specific temporal loudness. While there is only
little done on modeling phase-dependent sound
perception, auditory physiology may provide the other
part of the answer.