Wine glasses as multiphonic instruments forced to sound like monophonic instruments

Scientific Study from the year 2023 in the subject Physics - Acoustics, , language: English, abstract: The acoustic parameters of various types of "e;singing wine glasses"e; have been investigated after a finger-excitation (sliding the finger on the rim of the wine glass) or a hit-excitation (short hit with a metal stick against the bowl of the wine glass). After a hit-excitation, the wine glasses show typical characteristics of a multiphonic sounds, whereas a finger-excitation generates a monophonic sound known from monophonic instruments. It could be confirmed that filling water in the bowl will lower the frequency of the base-tone and the respective harmonics as described previously, but it could also be demonstrated that liquid in the bowl will change the intensity as well as the timbre of the generated sound significantly, which should be considered by musicians using glass harps. Under certain circumstances of a finger-excitation, the resulting sound shows in parallel features of a monophonic sound (base-tone and related harmonics) and features of a multiphonic sound (frequencies with no harmonic relationships plus complex tones). As the construction of a wine glass is by far less complex than a wood wind instrument, it might be a good object to investigate the principle mechanism of the production of complex tones within multiphonic sounds generated by tube-like instruments as wood winds.