The Musical Acoustics of Bundengan

Abstract

Bundengan  is  an  Indonesian  musical  instrument  developed  by  duck  herders  in  Wonosobo, Central  Java.  Recently  the  organology  of  the  bundengan  has  been  studied  by  M.  Sa‘id Abdulloh from  ISI Surakarta. We build upon this result and use quantitative measurements and  computations  to  reveal  the  exact  mechanisms  of  the  bundengan  strings  (see: http://tinyurl.com/Bundengan).  Our  measurements  show  that  the  small  bamboo  clips attached  to  the  strings  is  the  key  element  on  how  the  strings  generate  metallic  gong-like sounds. As the string is plucked, the bamboo clips divide the string into several parts, each of them vibrating with different frequencies. This results in non-harmonic spectra,  resembling the sounds from metallic instruments. Our computation show in more details how the mass of the bamboo clips determine the string vibrations.