5 ms·

Surprised to see no mention of fundamental frequencies or harmonics

neltnerb 6y ago
My 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 ago
  Yes, 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).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - computator 6y ago
    > Daniel Levitin: what makes each musical era distinctive: timbre was, in his opinion, the single most important factor That's a fascinating idea; I googled and found what might be the story you're looking for: [quote] In the best seller “This is your brain on music” by Daniel Levitin, he talks about John R. Pierce (inventor of the travelling wave vacuum tube and the first telecommunications satellite) who, interested to discover rock music, asked him to summarize the genre in a concise list of six songs. Levitin ended up with a list of songs from Little Richards, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Prince and the Sex Pistols. Interestingly, while listening, Pierce was not really interested by the songs themselves, their melodies, their harmonic structures or their rhythm characteristics, but he said he found the “timbres” to be remarkable and described them as being new, unfamiliar, and exciting. Levitin concludes his story by saying: “The way in which instruments were combined to create a unified whole - bass, drums, electric and acoustic guitars, and voice – that was something he (Pierce) had never heard before. Timbre was what defined rock for Pierce. And it was a revelation for both of us.” Quoted from "An Overview of the Concept of Timbre and its Use in Contemporary Music and Record Production" by Mathieu Bedwani
    - PeterWhittaker 6y ago
      That's the one!
  - cannam 6y ago
    > asked what makes each musical era distinctive: timbre Anyone interested in this might enjoy the paper about the "Scanning the Dial" experiment. (It's about contemporary music rather than historical eras, but the idea is related) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248906443_Scanning_the_Dial_The_Rapid_Recognition_of_Music_Genres https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248906443_Scanning_... The punchline is that listeners can typically assign a genre to a recording after hearing a single quarter-of-a-second clip, but the paper is worth reading for its notes on genre and timbre in general.
TaupeRanger 6y ago
Or literally anything about the physics of sound, which is very well understood and has names for all of the concepts the author is talking about without mentioning any of them.
nathanyo 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx_kugSemfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx_kugSemfY Andrew Huang's video on the harmonic series does a really cool dive into this
- redsparrow 6y ago
  This is a really excellent video. There is part where he has recordings of a clarinet and a guitar both playing the same note and slowly applies an filter to cut out the harmonics and the two distinct sounds converge. There is so much more to see in the video though and I highly recommend it.
- ngcc_hk 6y ago
  To be honest this discussion need a demo like this and further analysis.
calebm 6y ago
It's all about the harmonics man: https://github.com/calebmadrigal/FourierTalkOSCON/blob/master/07_SeeingSound.ipynb https://github.com/calebmadrigal/FourierTalkOSCON/blob/maste...
OmarShehata 6y ago
I think just saying "it's timbre" or stating these terms isn't helpful. I've read dozens of articles that try to explain these concepts but still left me with lingering questions. This was my attempt to show you how you can derive the answer from first principles, just by analyzing the sound, and forming your own hypothesis/getting to these conclusions yourself. The links at the end do have resources for the physics and theory behind it.
- y2bd 6y ago
  I actually do appreciate this teaching style, as long as you do put notes to the established theory and terminology at the end. It's like that popular Monad tutorial that has you implementing Functors and Monads in order to solve a problem without ever telling you until the end that what you just created were Functors and Monads. Starting off with the well-known terminology kind of colors the discussion from the beginning--even folks who don't really know what harmonics or timbre or monads or applicatives are probably have some general impression, and that impression could be wrong in a way that prevents them from learning.
- neltnerb 6y ago
  If you titled the article "Timbre -- why notes sound different across instruments" then the reader would know which wikipedia article to look up or which search terms to use to learn more. No reason that learning a fairly interesting word's definition can't be part of the lesson...
solids 6y ago
Also a very important fact, is that the stronger overtones are the unison (octave), and the 5th.
pier25 6y ago
Best video I've seen about the harmonic series is an old talk by Leonard Berstein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HjEAtJXssc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HjEAtJXssc

My 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 ago
Yes, 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).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- computator 6y ago
  > Daniel Levitin: what makes each musical era distinctive: timbre was, in his opinion, the single most important factor That's a fascinating idea; I googled and found what might be the story you're looking for: [quote] In the best seller “This is your brain on music” by Daniel Levitin, he talks about John R. Pierce (inventor of the travelling wave vacuum tube and the first telecommunications satellite) who, interested to discover rock music, asked him to summarize the genre in a concise list of six songs. Levitin ended up with a list of songs from Little Richards, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Prince and the Sex Pistols. Interestingly, while listening, Pierce was not really interested by the songs themselves, their melodies, their harmonic structures or their rhythm characteristics, but he said he found the “timbres” to be remarkable and described them as being new, unfamiliar, and exciting. Levitin concludes his story by saying: “The way in which instruments were combined to create a unified whole - bass, drums, electric and acoustic guitars, and voice – that was something he (Pierce) had never heard before. Timbre was what defined rock for Pierce. And it was a revelation for both of us.” Quoted from "An Overview of the Concept of Timbre and its Use in Contemporary Music and Record Production" by Mathieu Bedwani
  - PeterWhittaker 6y ago
    That's the one!
- cannam 6y ago
  > asked what makes each musical era distinctive: timbre Anyone interested in this might enjoy the paper about the "Scanning the Dial" experiment. (It's about contemporary music rather than historical eras, but the idea is related) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248906443_Scanning_the_Dial_The_Rapid_Recognition_of_Music_Genres https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248906443_Scanning_... The punchline is that listeners can typically assign a genre to a recording after hearing a single quarter-of-a-second clip, but the paper is worth reading for its notes on genre and timbre in general.

TaupeRanger 6y ago

Or literally anything about the physics of sound, which is very well understood and has names for all of the concepts the author is talking about without mentioning any of them.

nathanyo 6y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx_kugSemfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx_kugSemfY Andrew Huang's video on the harmonic series does a really cool dive into this

redsparrow 6y ago
This is a really excellent video. There is part where he has recordings of a clarinet and a guitar both playing the same note and slowly applies an filter to cut out the harmonics and the two distinct sounds converge. There is so much more to see in the video though and I highly recommend it.
ngcc_hk 6y ago
To be honest this discussion need a demo like this and further analysis.

calebm 6y ago

It's all about the harmonics man: https://github.com/calebmadrigal/FourierTalkOSCON/blob/master/07_SeeingSound.ipynb https://github.com/calebmadrigal/FourierTalkOSCON/blob/maste...

OmarShehata 6y ago

I think just saying "it's timbre" or stating these terms isn't helpful. I've read dozens of articles that try to explain these concepts but still left me with lingering questions. This was my attempt to show you how you can derive the answer from first principles, just by analyzing the sound, and forming your own hypothesis/getting to these conclusions yourself. The links at the end do have resources for the physics and theory behind it.

y2bd 6y ago
I actually do appreciate this teaching style, as long as you do put notes to the established theory and terminology at the end. It's like that popular Monad tutorial that has you implementing Functors and Monads in order to solve a problem without ever telling you until the end that what you just created were Functors and Monads. Starting off with the well-known terminology kind of colors the discussion from the beginning--even folks who don't really know what harmonics or timbre or monads or applicatives are probably have some general impression, and that impression could be wrong in a way that prevents them from learning.
neltnerb 6y ago
If you titled the article "Timbre -- why notes sound different across instruments" then the reader would know which wikipedia article to look up or which search terms to use to learn more. No reason that learning a fairly interesting word's definition can't be part of the lesson...

solids 6y ago

Also a very important fact, is that the stronger overtones are the unison (octave), and the 5th.

pier25 6y ago

Best video I've seen about the harmonic series is an old talk by Leonard Berstein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HjEAtJXssc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HjEAtJXssc