Sounding board
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The sounding board or soundboard is the part of a string instrument that transmits the vibrations of the strings to the air, greatly increasing the loudness of sound over that of the string alone.
The sounding board operates by the principle of forced vibration; the board is gently vibrated by the string, and despite their differences in size and composition, the board will be "forced" to vibrate at the exact same frequency, producing the same sound as the string alone, differing only in timbre. Although the same amount of energy is transmitted with or without the board present, the sounding board, due to its greater surface area, is more readily able to transform this energy into sound. In other words, the sounding board can move a much greater volume of air, therefore producing a louder sound.
Sounding boards are traditionally made of wood (see tonewood), though other materials can be used, such as skin or plastic on instruments in the banjo family. Wood sounding boards typically have sound holes in them with different shapes depending on the instrument: round in guitars, f-holes in violin family instruments, rosettes in lutes, and so on.
The sounding boards of some instruments have unique names, such as plate, or belly (the latter in a violin).
In a grand piano, the sounding board is a large horizontal plate at the bottom of the case. In an upright piano, the sounding board is a large vertical plate at the back of the instrument. The harp has a sounding board below the strings.
More generally, any hard surface can act as a sounding board. An example is when a tuning fork is struck and placed against a table top to amplify its sound.
[edit] See also
[edit] Other meanings
- Sounding board is also a term used to describe a person or a team who are used as a type of bounceback, allowing the person talking to see how their ideas sound. The person acting as sounding board is not really expected to give their own opinion, but simply to react to what is being said
