An Elementary Account of Plucked String Clonk – a key part of banjo sound

Abstract

The sudden onset of a plucked string’s oscillatory force on an acoustic instrument’s soundboard excites transients of the soundboard and instrument’s body. The transients’ frequencies are not directly related to those of the string’s vibration. And, on a banjo, they represent a significant fraction of the total sound. An account of the basic physics is provided by a simple extension of the standard solution of the forced, damped harmonic oscillator. (This approach is more elementary and perhaps more physical and transparent than the more professional method using Laplace transforms.)