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Why does an A note sound different across instruments?
- souprock 6y agoThere is a fun program that can display this sort of data as you play notes with your ordinary QWERTY keyboard: https://github.com/kevinacahalan/piano_waterfall https://github.com/kevinacahalan/piano_waterfall It's portable to Linux and Windows at least. It won't run well in a virtual machine (including a ChromeBook) because it needs a GPU that can scroll the window fast enough. There are 3 windows. One just shows the selected waveform. The others show an 8192-bucket FFT in red, a 1024-bucket FFT in green, and the active MIDI notes in blue. It's live, scrolling up at 93.75 pixels per second. The QWERTY row becomes the white keys, and the number row becomes the black keys. F1 through F4 choose the type of sound. Left and right arrows change the octave in use; your speakers probably don't handle the full range very well. The program turns out to be a great speaker test, especially if you change the sound to a sine wave. It's also a great keyboard test; see how many keys you can hold down before your keyboard won't register any more. Individual colors in either window can be toggled with the 2x3 keypad that has Insert, Delete, Home, End, PgUp, PgDn. (the screenshot has green toggled off) To make a trombone sound, first switch to a type of sound with lots of harmonics, like a sawtooth wave. Pick a low note, then find notes to line up well with the first two harmonics. Switch to the sine wave, and play all three of your chosen notes. For more of a clarinet sound, release the middle of the three that you have selected.
- linux_is_nice 6y agoYou're probably the first person in the wild I've seen that knows that Chromebooks support Linux containers now.
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- sova 6y agoSpectograms of each note will also make it strikingly clear that there is a dominant frequency invoked and overtones (harmonics) also being invoked that give the sound its full sound-profile. If sound is atmospheric texture, the overtones are irreplaceable grooves in the ether. The simple sine wave is exactly one dominant frequency in a spectrogram, a line. Instruments such as a trumpet will have upwards of 12 overtones, parallel lines, lessening in strength. One interesting idea that came to me last night was trying to reproduce the physical 3D model of an instrument based on its spectrographic fingerprint. With enough samples, this ought be possible, and with a 3D printer one might even be able to create interesting physical instantiations of instruments based on spectrographic fingerprints. One could even create never-before-seen instruments based on a generated spectrogram, in an interesting radar-to-ocean operation (as opposed to ocean-to-radar, how radar normally works). Maybe topography-from-radar is a clearer way to state the same. Generating audio from spectrograms is an open problem and I would love to see more open-source work in this domain.
- CogitoCogito 6y ago> One interesting idea that came to me last night was trying to reproduce the physical 3D model of an instrument based on its spectrographic fingerprint. In case you haven't already read it, this might be of interest to you: Mark Kac: "Can One Hear the Shape of a Drum?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_the_shape_of_a_drum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_the_shape_of_a_drum https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/22/Ford/MarkKac.pdf https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/2...
- junon 6y agoWould be interested to see this applied to drums that have intra-beat tuning, such as the talking drum or the idakka.
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y agoAnd this is why we can synthesize different instruments electronically. Reproduce the overtone patterns and you hear the same instrument. Not to mention, two different pianos or two different violins can sound very different.
- loganhood 6y agoThe sustained overtones are only half the battle. Getting the attack correct (the sound profile of the first ~10 milliseconds) is really important for differentiating instruments. Plucking a guitar string and hammering a piano string have very different attack characteristics. A flute has a distinctively "breathy" attack. Many synthesizers use a sampled recording of the actual instrument for the attack, then synthesize the sustained portion of the instrument.
- whiddershins 6y ago> The sustained overtones are only half the battle. Actually probably like 10% at most of the battle. My understanding is attack is overwhelmingly dominant in our perception of timbre.
- cjbenedikt 6y agoDepends on the frequency https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A440_(pitch_standard) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A440_(pitch_standard)
- Closi 6y agoDid you read the article? This point is debunked right at the start (i.e. two instruments playing the same frequency still sound different).
- dillondoyle 6y agoi think what op might be referring to is what tuning 'A' sounds like. e.g. some orchestras will tune at 415 to play older music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvb7VlL_d6I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvb7VlL_d6I
- Closi 6y agoYeah, the point of the article was just that 440 hz (or 415) on one instrument isn’t the same as 440 hz from another instrument in terms of the sound.
- barnabees 6y agoSurprised to see no mention of fundamental frequencies or harmonics
- neltnerb 6y agoMy electronic music professor literally defined exactly what this article is trying to describe as "timbre" meaning the overtone sequence (oddly "overtone" and "timbre" are not present in the article?) plus off-harmonic frequencies that are present for any real instrument. This is pretty well studied, but kudos to the author for trying to explain it again, it's an odd topic. But I suggest looking up "timbre" at least and perhaps updating the article with the terms used by actual musicians to mean exactly this. Timbre - "the quality of tone distinctive of a particular singing voice or musical instrument"
- PeterWhittaker 6y agoYes, this! Failing to mention timbre in an article on why the same note sounds differently on two instruments is missing the point, metaphorically being so focused on a detailed simulation of treestuff that one fails forestry. (Yeah, OK, that was terribly said, sorry 'bout that.) For timbre, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbre e.g. FFTs, etc., give us visualization tools, but they miss the point. Different materials resonate differently across the auditory spectrum, emphasizing or diminishing various harmonics, resulting in complex sound profiles that make each instrument distinctive. Or, to put it most simply: Different materials react to sound differently, and each instrument's materials and construction are what give it its distinctive timbre. On an unrelated note, Daniel Levitin, former music producer and director of the Grammys, and current neuroscientist at McGill, was once asked what makes each musical era distinctive: timbre was, in his opinion, the single most important factor (source: one of his books, probably still in a moving box in my basement, otherwise I'd look it up).
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- computator 6y ago
- TheActualWalko 6y agoHere's some code on WavTool for trying out overtone combinations: https://wavtool.com/?code=3 https://wavtool.com/?code=3
- zokier 6y agoI think it's bit of a shame that the time dependence is left as a footnote. ADSR envelope and other expressive dynamics have also huge influence on the perceived sound of different instruments (for at least me..). This has been then explored by electronic musicians by mixing and matching the dynamics and overtone patterns to create all sorts of interesting novel sounds.
- odyssey7 6y agoThis fact was confusing for me back in my school’s chorus. I don’t know if it was confusing to anyone else, but it was to me. How does a person match the pitch of the piano? I could hear a few different pitches when one note was played (in a confused way, I would zero in on different parts of the sound), any of which might have been the target pitch to be matched. And was I supposed to make my voice sound more like the piano? Was that part of “matching the note?” Complicating things was the fact that my own voice had different pitches in it. Which part of my voice was supposed to match the note? What a time. Now I know I was noticing the fundamental of the piano note at times and overtones at some others. Also, changing the timbre of your voice can mirror the overtones of the piano better, but that isn’t normally the goal of a singer.
- whiddershins 6y agoThere’s a theory that harmony arose from this. A percentage of monks heard a different fundamental pitch than their brethren, so they sang one of the harmonics. Leading to polyphonic hymns and then to formal western harmony. (Shaped by equal temperament along the way)
- spoonjim 6y agoI’d love to hear a synthetic instrument that’s halfway between a piano and a violin.
- smlss_sftwr 6y agoIf I remember correctly Google open-sourced an ML toolkit to do just that a few years back, I forget the name but someone spun up an online sandbox with it that lets you experiment with combining different sample sources edit: found it here: https://experiments.withgoogle.com/sound-maker https://experiments.withgoogle.com/sound-maker
- lostgame 6y agoLogic’s Sculpture synth allows you to create synthesis using materials, such as nylon, wood, metal, etc; and move in between them to create sounds like this. :)
- pier25 6y agoThat's called physical modeling. Another synth that does this is Chrompahone by AAS: https://www.applied-acoustics.com/chromaphone-3/ https://www.applied-acoustics.com/chromaphone-3/ In fact it was used by Richard Devine to produce UI sounds for Google.
- ksherlock 6y agoLike a viola organista, perhaps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_organista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_organista
- yesenadam 6y ago"The hurdy-gurdy is a stringed instrument that produces sound by a hand-crank-turned, rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to those of a violin. Melodies are played on a keyboard" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurdy-gurdy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurdy-gurdy Andrey Vinogradov playing his https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwyznoWJDHI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwyznoWJDHI
- sharpercoder 6y agoI see grey text on white backgrounds more and more. It is infuriating. Please just use #000, it heavily distracts from the content and unecessarily makes the point literally unclear.
- young_unixer 6y ago#000 is very readable, but looks ugly. The sweet spot is between #222 and #333 in my opinion.
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- analog31 6y agoIn addition to harmonic content, time plays a role too. For instance, harmonics are not the only reason why a snare drum sounds different than an oboe.
- halayli 6y agoThe title and content don't match. The way we distinguish between musical instruments and notes is because of timbre/tone color. Which has nothing to do with fourier transforms per se and you can use wavelet for that matter. DFT/DTFT are the most common approaches to quantize and convert back to analog and they can be completely left out of the discussion for such a title.
- marcodiego 6y agoSimple answer: different timbres.
- quadrangle 6y agoAnd timbre is itself technically defined as all the aspects of a sound that are not pitch, loudness, or location. So, it doesn't really explain anything. It's kinda circular. Timbre is itself the word for "sounding different" (without being different in pitch, loudness, or location). My simple answer: "different frequency spectrum + consistent patterns of change over time in spectrum, loudness, and/or pitch" E.g. it's not the loudness of trumpet vs piano, but it is partly the fact that trumpet doesn't consistently have the loud to quiet fade timbrel temporal pattern of piano
- deathanatos 6y agoBut not a useful answer to someone asking the question… they're simply going to respond with "What's timbre?" and if you answer is something like "It's what makes an A sound different on different instruments", they're not going to be satisfied. The question is clearly not, "what's the musical term for why instruments sound different when playing the same pitch?" (timbre) it's, "what is the fundamental reason for that?" — and for most people, they have a mental model that an instrument plays a single frequency, so you have to show them that that model is broken, and then it becomes very clear, very fast what is going on.
- HPsquared 6y agoThe inner ear literally applies a Fourier transform to the incoming waveform, each location containing tiny hairs which each respond to a narrow frequency range. The spectrogram directly reflects what is sensed by the inner ear.
- ani-ani 6y agoThis is a fun exploration, though there's a lot of fuzzy usage of terms and missing stuff. Eg. the first 5 paragraphs are apparently trying to define timbre, yet the word appears nowhere. Same with harmonics, etc. I think one of the most interesting things about pitch is that it's not well defined, it's a psychological phenomenon. If you could extract it from people's brains, you would likely get different values from different people. This is compounded by the fact that harmonics produced by real instruments are not exact ratios of each other, yet they affect the perceived pitch.
- jancsika 6y agoThere's a neat thing about a kind of "relative timbre." E.g., if you listen to a solo piano piece, you make some kind of adjustment to the homogenized timbres and are able to focus in on smaller timbral differences. There's a music cognition paper about it somewhere.
- munificent 6y agoThis is a really interesting article because the author clearly figured out some stuff but also hasn't filled in all the missing pieces or learned the terms yet. They are absolutely correct that the thing that makes different instruments playing the same pitch sound different is additional higher-frequency components. In particular, frequencies that are integer multiples of the lowest fundamental frequency are called harmonics. The set of harmonics and their relative amplitudes determines an instrument's timbre (usually prounounce "tamber" in English) or its characteristic sound. There are also inharmonics—frequencies that aren't multiples of the fundamental. Those tend to die out quickly because they don't form standing waves in the resonating body. These transient sounds form an important part of the very beginning of the sound. Some instruments, like bells, have more or longer-lasting inharmonics.
- titzer 6y agoI spent hours playing with Friture, which is a continuously-running audio spectrum analyzer. It's really cool to see the characteristics of a musical instrument live and connect the visual cortex to the auditory.
- hashkb 6y agoCan you clarify harmonic vs overtone?
- SeanLuke 6y agoAll sound waves can be defined as the sum of a (possibly infinite) set of different sine waves. Each such sine wave naturally has a frequency (a pitch), an amplitude, and a phase. If you break a wave into its constituent sine waves like this, each sine wave is known as a PARTIAL. Sound waves that we perceive as tonal -- as musical -- commonly consist with partials which follow a certain pattern. Namely, there is one lowest partial, and most or all of the higher partials have frequencies which are INTEGER MULTIPLES of the this lowest partial's frequency. For example, if the fundamental is at 200Hz, perhaps the next lowest partial is at 400Hz, and the next one might be at 600 or 800Hz, and so on. When partials are organized like this, they are known as HARMONICS. The lowest such partial -- the lowest harmonic -- is called the FUNDAMENTAL, and the remaining (higher) harmonics are known as the OVERTONES. It is common, but not always the case, that the fundamental (1) defines the pitch of the sound (2) is the loudest harmonic. Overtones instead tend to add color to a sound.
- jedimastert 6y agoI thought this was going to be a discussion on why different orchestral instruments have different "concert" pitches (i.e. a C on a trumpet is a Bb on a piano and so on), which is an interesting look into the history of European instrument inventors in the 20th century.
- eyelidlessness 6y agoI’m so glad to see harmonics well discussed in the comments, and was so disappointed to see it not mentioned once in the article. Putting aside percussive differences between instruments or playing style (which also have harmonic effects but aren’t always perceived that way), the difference between a “frequency” that sounds different but measures the same is generally because there are many less prominent frequencies behind the dominant one. That’s why some sounds twang and other sounds thunder. That’s why some coated strings sound dull. That’s why loose drum heads sound loose. That’s why a sawtooth or sine wave sounds synthetic: it is, nothing in real life sounds like that.
- souprock 6y agoReal life sine wave: ocarina Real life sawtooth: violin
- eyelidlessness 6y agoI can’t speak to the ocarina but a violin??? It’s an instrument infamous for screechy off sounds. Those are caused by unexpected friction on the strings amplifying or even making harmonics dominant. The most prominent sound wave may mimic a sawtooth because of the mechanics of a bow (I don’t know, just trusting you on this), but every bit of loose fiber on the bow and every inconsistency in rosin and every physical variation on the surface of the string can produce harmonics before any sound hits the curves of the body, which produces yet more.
- diimdeep 6y agoHere is video [1] with example of using physical modeling method `Karplus–Strong string` [2] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOpZYlI-F1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOpZYlI-F1g [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karplus–Strong_string_synthesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karplus–Strong_string_synthesi...
- tomstoms 6y agoInterestingly, exact same phenomenon occurs in speech. What is the difference between the sounds /a/ and /o/? Turns out it’s timbre and that our vocal cavities changing form changes the timbre while the vocal chords produce the same fundamental frequency.
- tomstoms 6y agoFurther, by producing spectrograms, you can see the dominant harmonics of vowels, they are called formants, and you can learn to differentiate vowels based on comparing spectrograms without hearing the sounds. It’s pretty cool.
- squabble 6y agoThe real beauty happens when more than one note is played at the same time. The overlapping harmonics give rise to harmony. Combine various instruments to get all kinds of interesting sounds. This is part of the art of orchestration.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y agoAll the way into Fourier but no mention of harmonics? This is a little over-academic relative to one of the main factors that influences the texture ("timbre") of sound - namely its harmonic content. Distortion on a guitar makes an identical phrase sound much richer, and it's not just the wavelength limiting - it's the much louder harmonics relative to the fundamental.
- ciconia 6y agoTimbre is not only about harmonic content. There's also the envelope of the sound - how it changes over time. Violin pizzicato (plucked) sounds completely different than violin arco (bowed), yet it's the same string being excited into vibration. Pizzicato is percussive and decaying, arco is more smooth and sustaining. Same for piano - try to imagine a piano sound that doesn't decay and doesn't start with a bit of percussive thump, that would sound quite different!