Plucked strings vibrate autonomously after excitation, simplifying their modelling.

Evidence

In plucked string instruments, the excitation is impulse-like. Ideally, the plucking imposes a pulse of acceleration on the position of plucking from where the wave starts to propagate in both directions of the string. Figure 6.1 shows the playing of the classical acoustic guitar, where the strings are plucked with fingers. When plucking with fingers, the temporal excitation of the string is smoother than an ideal impulse, causing a low-pass filtering effect in the sound. After the plucking, the string vibrates autonomously, the amplitude decaying with time. In this case, the modelling is relatively easy, because the vibrations of the string occurring after the excitation cannot affect the excitation itself. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 668

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains why plucked-string synthesis is computationally simple: post-excitation vibration never feeds back into the excitation source.