Nonharmonic mode relationships make struck bars and membranes sound clangy.

Evidence

Percussion instruments that make use of bars, membranes or plates as their vibrating system (described in Section 4.4), which are struck, have a distinct timbral quality of their own. This is due to the nonharmonic relationship between the frequencies of their natural modes, which provides a clear acoustic cue to their family identity. It gives the characteristic “clanginess” to this class of instruments, which endows them with a timbral quality of their own. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 1479

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies ‘clanginess’ as the perceptual signature of inharmonic partials in idiophones and membranophones.
• XREF: Connects to the earlier chapter-4 discussion of bar and plate modes the text explicitly cites.