Analysis, modeling, and real-time sound synthesis of the kantele, a traditional Finnish string instrument

The kantele is a unique old Finnish string instrument that has been found to have interesting acoustical principles of sound production, including nonlinear behavior and dual-mode vibrations of the strings. The main interest was in the most traditional five-string kantele. It is a musical instrument tuned to the pentatonic scale. The authors describe results from a study where the acoustics of the instrument were first analyzed, its sound generation principles were then modeled computationally, and finally a real-time sound synthesis algorithm was developed for a floating-point signal processor. The simplified model of the kantele, when properly adjusted, leads to synthetic sounds that well resemble the original instrument.<>