behavior of kantele strings, body, and sound radiation. This
article starts with a structural description of an open-body
kantele, as well as playing techniques and tuning of the instrument
in Sec. II. Section III presents an acoustical analysis
of the instrument. The terminations of the strings deserve
special attention since they introduce strong beating and nonlinear
effects to the sound. The nonlinear vibrations of the
kantele strings are of exceptional importance in producing
the resulting timbre. The properties of body vibrations as a
response to the driving forces on the strings are demonstrated.
In Sec. IV, a computationally efficient sound synthesis
algorithm is presented. The algorithm captures the most
essential properties of the kantele sound, and allows for the
synthesis of kantele tones in real time.