Piano Strings with Reduced Inharmonicity

Abstract

On modern straight pianos, the inharmonicity of the lower strings is rather large especially for the first octave. Consequently, the timber of these strings can sometimes sound awful and chords on the first octave be highly dissonant. The idea of the present study is to show how this defect can be rectified using an inhomogeneous winding on the whole string in order to minimize inharmonicity. The problem is solved using an optimisation procedure considering a non uniform linear density. Results show that the inharmonicity of the first partials could be highly reduced by a non uniform winding limited to a quarter of the string.