Review: SMAC83: Proceedings of the Stockholm Music Acoustics Conference edited by Askenfelt, Felicetti, Janson, and Sundberg

Reviewed By Thomas D. Rossing

Originally published in American Lutherie #6, 1986 and Big Red Book of American Luthierie Volume One, 2000



SMAC83: Proceedings of the Stockholm Music Acoustics Conference
Edited by Askenfelt, Felicetti, Janson, and Sundberg
Two volumes
Royal Swedish Academy of Music
%Music Acoustics
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)
S 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden

In August 1983, the Music Acoustics Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music arranged the Stockholm Music Acoustics Conference (“SMAC 83”). The meeting focused on two related themes: acoustics of string instruments and acoustics of the singing voice. It was cosponsored by the Catgut Acoustical Society and the International Association for Experimental Research in Singing.

The papers on acoustics of string instruments appear in Volume II (24 papers; 342 pages). The emphasis of the conference was on bowed string instruments, the subject of fifteen papers. Four papers were devoted to guitars and the remainder to pianos, harps, and other instruments including the tanpura of India. The contributors represented many different countries of the world.

Ove Christensen (Denmark) describes an oscillator model for analysis of guitar sound pressure response. This paper, which also appears in Acustica 54, 289–95 (1984), deserves to be read by conscientious luthiers, since Christensen’s simple model is reasonably successful in relating the acoustical output of five classical guitars in the low- to mid-frequency range (100Hz–800Hz) to parameters characterizing the principal resonances of the guitars tested.