Editor's Summary
7 July 2005
Lip service
The Australian didgeridoo or yidaki is a simple wind instrument, yet a good player can coax from it a variety of timbres greater than that of many an orchestral instrument. A study of the vocal tract and lip contortions necessary for this feat tells us a lot about how music is made.
Brief Communications: Acoustics: The vocal tract and the sound of a didgeridoo
Acoustic measurements show how a player can extract a range of timbres from this primitive instrument.
Alex Tarnopolsky, Neville Fletcher, Lloyd Hollenberg, Benjamin Lange, John Smith and Joe Wolfe
doi:10.1038/43639a
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (156K) | Supplementary information
