Development of silk strings from original Japanese silkworm races –Tone properties of silk strings of various cocoons–

Abstract

The aim of our 4-year long project was to develop highly durable silk koto strings with marked sonority by using the original Japanese races of silkworms. In a previous paper, we reported that there were significant differences in durability and sonority among the silk strings from different races of silkworms. Here, we report the differences in sonority of strings from various races of silkworms in experimental musical performances on the newly developed “silent” koto. Our overall aim was to minimize the reverberation of the instrument itself.