Monochord

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A monochord is an ancient musical and scientific laboratory instrument. The word "monochord" comes from the Greek and means literally "one string." A misconception of the term lies within its name. Often monochord have more than one string, most of the time two, one open string and a second string with a movable bridge. In a basic monochord, a single string is stretched over a sound box. The string is fixed at both ends while one or many movable bridges are manipulated to demonstrate mathematical relationships between sounds. With two strings you can easily demonstrate how a consonant just chord sounds. Both open strings are tuned equal and than the movable bridge is put on a mathmatical position to demonstrate for instance the major third (at 4/5th of the string length) or the minor third (at 5/6th of the string length).

The monochord can be used to illustrate the mathematical properties of musical pitch. For example, when a monochord's string is open it vibrates at a particular frequency and produces a pitch. When the length of the string is halved, and plucked, it produces a pitch an octave higher and the string vibrates at twice the frequency of the original (2:1). Half of this length will produce a pitch two octaves higher than the original—four times the initial frequency (4:1)—and so on. Standard diatonic Pythagorean tuning (Ptolemy’s Diatonic Ditonic) is easily derived starting from superparticular ratios, (n+1)/n, constructed from the first four counting numbers, the tetractys, measured out on a monochord.

Monopipe is a wind instrument which serves the same purpose as the monochord.

[This following section needs significant revision to include Boethius, Ptolemy (his own harmonic system for the cosmos, as well as his lengthy descriptions of monochord theory), Pythagorean tradition, Plato, Platonism, and Neoplatonic material and probably some Aristoxenus as a counter to numerical idealsim, not to mention Gaffurius, Ramis, Euclid, Kepler, and a host of other references. Jumping to Robert Fludd and the description provided is misleading, although his image of a monochord in the work cited is much more accurate than the marine trumpet (a bowed harmonic instrument) previously shown in this article.] In 1618, Robert Fludd devised a mundane monochord (also celestial or divine monochord) that linked the Ptolemaic universe to musical intervals. An image of the celestial monochord was used on the 1952 cover of Anthology of American Folk Music by Harry Everett Smith and in the 1977 book The Cosmographical Glass: Renaissance Diagrams of the Universe (p. 133) by S.K. Heninger, Jr., ISBN 9780873282086.

A modern playing technique used in experimental rock as well as contemporary classical music is 3rd bridge. This technique shares the same mechanism as used on the monochord, by dividing the string into two sections with an additional bridge.

[edit] See also

• Đàn bầu
• Duxianqin
• Ektara
• Moodswinger
• Musical bow
• Berimbau
• Ichigenkin
• Diddley bow
• Long string instrument

v • d • e Instrument intonation Just intonation in any key Fretless string instrument  · Pedal steel guitar  · Trombone  · Human voice  · Synthesizer Dynamic intonation adjustment Fretted string instrument  · Wind instruments Just intonation in one key Bagpipe  · Natural horn  · Tromba marina  · Long string instrument  · Harmonica Retunable to a just key Keyboard instruments Flageolet tones or natural overtone series Guqin · Đàn bầu Physical just-intoned string part relation with additional 3rd bridge Monochord  · Pencilina  · Moodswinger