The paper describes a theoretical study on the flexural vibration of an elastic flat bar with periodically nonuniform material properties. The approximate solution of the natura1 frequency and mode shape has been obtained using the perturbation technique for sinusoidal modulation of the flexural rigidify and mass density. The numerical solution obtained by using the finite element method verifies the trend of the approximate solution. It appears that distributed vibrations exist in the low modes, and this approach can be extended to the vibration analysis of the p1ate in the flat panel speaker.