This thesis is concerned with the jew's harp and more particularly with the link between physiological actions of the player and the resulting sound transformations.

Because they are concealed by nature, jew's harp's techniques are of the most difficult to figure out as a large part of the sound transformation happens in the vocal tract. This fact is probably the reason why existing musicology researches on this instrument only have referred to the melody, which actually only represents a small range of the large modulated spectrum of the instrument: if we analyze the audio frequencies of a jew’s harp by means of a spectrogram, we can particularly notice, in addition to what constitutes the main melody, a second modulated line between the fundamental and the lowest frequencies of the melodic pattern.

This study aims at figuring out the origin of these specific frequencies (LSF, Trias(2010)) and the mechanical processes responsible for their modulation. But it will only be possible by combining several disciplines (physics, acoustics, physiology, biological measurements) which must be considered as the necessary tools to enable us to understand and discuss about the different use of these frequencies among traditions.

I started by drawing up an acoustic model of the instrument by collecting and arguing the data from existing academic documentation. After having pointed out that the modification of these frequencies occurs inside the vocal tract, I introduced the fundamentals of acoustics related to cavity resonances. This theory, together with magnetic resonance imagery and spectra analyses allowed me to figure out the actual action of the vocal tract in the frequency range I am interested in and thus conclude my analytic part. A next chapter illustrates through some extracts picked up from different jew's harp traditions how these LSF are integrated into the techniques. I demonstrated how some players take advantage of these frequencies to enrich their music and create subtle combinations of sounds with the melodic line. Finally, this global and multidisciplinary approach will open up the field to new axes of study in musicology or ethnology that I briefly introduced as a conclusion.

Download the full thesis in pdf format

Download the attached DVD

Please mail me at munnharpeslatten@gmail.com for a paper/DVD edition of it.

119 pages, full color. 35 euros.