Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An acoustic instrument consisting of a sounding box with one string and a movable bridge, used to study musical tones.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An acoustical instrument, invented at a very early date in Egypt or Greece, consisting of a long resonance-box over which a single string of gut or wire is stretched, the vibrating length, and thus the pitch, of which is fixed by a movable bridge.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Mus.) An instrument for experimenting upon the mathematical relations of musical sounds. It consists of a single string stretched between two bridges, one or both of which are movable, and which stand upon a graduated rule for the purpose of readily changing and measuring the length of the part of the string between them.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
musical instrument forexperimenting with themathematical relations ofmusical sounds , consisting of a singlestring stretched between twobridges , one or both of which can be moved, and which stand upon agraduated rule for the purpose of changing and measuring the length of the part of the string between them.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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It was afterward known as the "monochord," and by its means all the ancients demonstrated the ratios of the octave, fourth and fifth, as we will later see.
A Popular History of the Art of Music From the Earliest Times Until the Present 1874
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Smith wrote synopses of the songs and created his own artwork, including an etching of a monochord taken from a mystical treatise by 17th-century English astrologer Robert Fludd.
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Smith wrote synopses of the songs and created his own artwork, including an etching of a monochord taken from a mystical treatise by 17th-century English astrologer Robert Fludd.
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Note 225: The 15th-century (Italian) treatise by Johannis Gallici, the Liber notabilis musicae, includes an image of "the first stage of the conversion of the monochord into the clavichord."
Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008
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One of the instruments used in these experiments, the monochord, had been devised to show the proportional relation between the subdivisions of a taut string and audible pitches.
Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008
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A treatise on the monochord discussing these matters, composed by Ugolino of Orvieto, was present in the ducal library. 215 112
Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008
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He worked with a monochord and found the beautiful mathematical logic that the frequency of sound is inversely proportionate to the length of the string. …tonal resonance played on string, harmonic overtones heard… And they observed that half the length of the string gave double the frequency or octave.
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He worked with a monochord and found the beautiful mathematical logic that the frequency of sound is inversely proportionate to the length of the string. …tonal resonance played on string, harmonic overtones heard… And they observed that half the length of the string gave double the frequency or octave.
Archive 2009-04-10 2009
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Again, you know, the heritage of Western and Central Africa, speaking in the Deep South, a diddley bow was a monochord, a piece of wire that you'd attach to the side of a house and beat with one hand and played with a slider.
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Guido of Arezzo showed his pupils an easier method of determining the sounds of the scale than by the use of the monochord.
Archive 2008-06-01 bls 2008
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