INTRODUCTION

Sound at its most basic level is the way our minds interpret air pressure changes and rapid vibrations through any medium.

What is sound?

Energy, when it comes down to it sound is a way that our minds can interpret energy. Sound doesn’t really exist on its own in nature. It needs something that can hear it. You see most life in our world has some way of hearing the sound. But even if they don’t have ears they can still “feel the beat”. But why?

Anything and everything that has some form of energy have atoms moving, some things produce heat and light, others produce sound and vibration of force. The energy that creates the vibrations push outward away from its point of origin, like a killer riff from your amp.

It hits objects where the energy is divided into 2 forms, reflective vibrations, and absorbed vibrations.

1. The reflective bounce off of objects and then push themselves around the area.
2. The vibrations that were absorbed now will either lose their vibration or carry on through the object to the other side, where it will continue its journey through the air.

This is the same thing that happens in all mediums, underwater, soil, metal, plastic, and different gasses in the air. The reason why this doesn’t happen in space is that space is made up of… well... Space. And a lot of it. Nothing to transfer the energy.

Music is the use of this energy to convey emotions and thoughts. So perfect.

Now comes the fun part. Wood is a great way to move energy around. Especially if you are wanting to create several different pitches through part of the spectrum that we can hear. It is hard enough to move the energy to where it can either be amplified through either electric means or acoustic means.

So does the wood matter, you better believe it does.

When you pluck a string it starts the process. The string vibrates back and forth at a certain frequency depending on its thickness, length, and how much tension it is under. The vibrations are then transferred into the soundboard through the bridge. It then begins to resonate with the soundboard and create pressure waves at the same frequency that the string is vibrating at.

Now sound occurs. The pressure waves generated from the soundboard resonate through the body of the guitar, creating warmth and depth. It then transfers its energy through the air where we can either record it or listen to it.

Vibrations through different mediums

Not all matter is the same. In fact, most are quite different. The ability for an object to transfer vibration is determined by several factors, outside texture, and shape, material, the density of the material.

For us today we will be focusing on the density and how this is important.

Low Density

Pretend you are in a big house. A lot of rooms and they are big. You have to play the telephone game and transmit some phrase through the whole house as fast as you can. If you need to run from one room to the next it will take time. Then when you get there you need to yell the message to the next person and so on. A big empty space means you need to work harder to go from room to room.

This slows down the vibration slightly, causing the tone to warm up. It also allows larger vibrations room to transfer without being pinched. This also brings up the warmth. The highs might get lost in the tone. They move too fast and dissipate before being fully transferred.

High Density

Now you are in the same big house, but it’s full of people packed together. Now the density is much higher. You get the message and just turn around and give it to the next person. It spreads quickly as there is not as much need for the people to move to transmit the information.

So high density will be fast, also it will transmit the data with more of the high tones, the lower tones never have as much room to move and can have trouble moving.

Conclusion?

Well just because you know how something works don’t mean it’s good or bad. It just gives you more knowledge behind your choices.

A more dense piece of wood will do great on the high end but might lose that warm tone people crave. The less-dense of wood might be too middle and muddy, causing it to be bad under heavy distortion.

And not to mention the shape, bracing, and everything else that goes into giving the instrument its voice.