A bowed string drives the bridge with a sawtooth waveform

Evidence

All the sound starts at the string, whether plucked or bowed. But bowing is the norm, and also something of a miracle, one of the most beautiful choreographies of motion in all of the world of sound, and too fast for us to see: the Helmholtz wave and stick-slip collaborative driving. The bottom line of this choreography is that the bowed string forces the bridge with a periodic sawtooth waveform, full of higher harmonics. — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 1744

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the Helmholtz wave and stick-slip mechanism in physics-of-bowing terms.
• CANDY: The bowed string producing a sawtooth waveform full of harmonics is a neat, shareable fact.