[NewCandle] Aeolian harp update

[Keith Nagel]

Hi All,

Just a quick update on things aeolian, before I get back to hackin's.

The frequency of vibration is ~ (1/5 * Windspeed) / wire diameter

A simple single string will therefore only work at certain quantized
wind speeds. The length of wire would have to be resonant based on the
speed of sound through the wire and the spacial harmonic you are
looking to excite ( probably half wave mode for this application ).
A harp is a plurality of such strings, each of a different diameter
and length to allow for sounding over a range of wind speeds. This
is not the best way for us to go, but it should suggest to you
some of the challenges to a usable industrial design.

I found a musician on the net who did some simple experiments with
wire and wood sounding boards, check out some of the videos here.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=lukejerram&view=videos 

The tent/plywood sheet system is very clever, and must have made
for an interesting sound installation piece. You can also see
what I was saying about the need for a sounding system if you
want appreciable sound to come out. I think that a power system
would be fairly quiet in practice because we would be damping
the oscillations by drawing power and the only coupling to
the air is through the wire itself ( for example, go to
the music store and pluck an acoustic guitar string, then
try same on an unamplified electric guitar. )

K.