The pressure field of nonuniform, slender, free‐free beams of circular cross section is constructed by modeling the beam as a dipole array. Using the orthogonality relation of normal modes, the farfield pressure in a plane normal to the beam axis is shown to be associated with rigid‐body translation and, under highly restrictive conditions, viz. local deviations of the effective beam density from the beam's mean density, on elastic, particularly resonant modes.