wood and pleasant sounds – tonewood

tonewoods

Due to its good acoustic properties, wood is used in the construction of music instruments.

Tonewood is wood that is suitable for the construction of musical instruments according to its type, quality and storage.

Wood that has grown slowly and thus has narrow annual rings is predominantly used. It must be grown as straight as possible, have few knots and its sound frequency should be as high as possible. Instrument woods are dried for 30 – 40 years so that they can be processed without tension and draught.

Wood in music instrument manufacturing

The soundboard of guitars and violins is usually made of European spruce (Picea abies), but more recently redwood has also been used for classical guitars, especially by American builders. Bows for stringed instruments are often made of South American snakewood, an extremely hard, heavy and rare mulberry plant. (For snakewood, also see „Wood is heavily important„) 

High art of violin making and the Little Ice Age

Amati from Cremona, who founded the Cremonese violin making school in the mid-16th century, is one of the most famous violin makers. One of his most famous students was Stradivari at the end of the 17th century.

According to a theory circulated in 2005, the special climatic conditions in Europe during the so-called „Little Ice Age“ (16th-19th centuries) were responsible for the ability to use wood of such quality for instrument making that no longer exists today. The lower average temperatures led to altered tree growth with smaller annual ring spacing and reduced the amount of late wood (dark annual ring).

source: translated from WIKIPEDIA Germany