Building 1/6th of a Guitar

    For the second project of my Junior STEAM class, Light, Sound, and Time we have been in the unit Sound. We have been learning about how sound works, including how it travels through different mediums, what sound humans can/can’t hear, how different things make sound, how humans process sound, etc. The project we were assigned was building one string guitars or diddley bows out of tin cans and wood. We did this to put together what we learned visiting Guitar Center and what we have been studying over the last few weeks.

MD, Diddley Bow Drawing, 2022

Acoustic guitars produce sound when the string is played and the vibrations ring in the body of the guitar.  The diddley bow functions similarly, except it only has one string. Many people use a slide with a diddley bow to switch to different notes. You can see a video of me demonstrating how the diddley bow makes sound below. 

MD, Diddley Bow, 2022

The slideshow above has more information about the measurements of the diddley bow and the harmonics. The harmonics are marked on the diddley bow and their waves are shown on the slideshow. Each harmonic is in relation to the other harmonics. For example the 4th harmonic is half as long as the 2nd. 

This project has been a very engaging way to put the principles we have learned into direct action. Making my own instrument and measuring its sound waves while being able to hear it is a great way to actually directly hear and understand what the words we have been learning about mean and correspond to. I was happy with my results but if I were to do it again I think I would've wanted to be more precise with my work. One specific thing that comes to mind is that I made the hole on the can/resonator too big which made it move with the string in a way that gave it an odd sound. I fixed this by taping it down but it still would've been nice to avoid the problem.