Tagungsband - DAGA 2024
Beitrag
Effect of Reed Detuning on the Sound of a 3-Voiced Styrian Harmonica
Zusammenfassung:
The Styrian Harmonica is a bisonoric diatonic button accordion. Using three different reeds for each pitch make it a 3-voiced harmonica. Its distinctive sound, the acoustic beat, results from tuning the 3 reeds for each pitch to slightly different frequencies. The frequency difference among the reeds for a single pitch determines the amount of acoustic beat, also called tremolo. A previous study focusing on the perceived sound characteristics of harmonicas showed that tremolo-related attributes are the most relevant ones, and based on listening experiments with recorded sounds of different instruments, a perceptual model was established. However, evaluating the perceived tremolo in small increments was impracticable, as adjusting the tremolo involves grinding the reeds. In this work we present a method for generating 3-voiced sounds with adjustable tremolo based on single-voiced recorded samples. These generated sounds are compared to 3-voiced sounds of a real instrument with the same tuning to verify their perceptual plausibility.