Questions tagged [overtones]
For questions related to frequencies greater than the fundamental frequency of a given sound. Questions may also necessitate the acoustics and/or harmonics tags.
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Does rhythm create pitch? [closed]
You see, rhythm and pitch are exactly the same thing, only at very
different speeds.
https://dantepfer.com/blog/?p=277
Every pitch can be interpreted as a (very fast) rhythm, but the only
rhythms ...
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What is heard when a tuning fork is struck?
When a tuning fork is struck I hear two tones. From a distance I can hear a high octave frequency of the pitch of the tuning fork. Though, if I listen to it closely (closer to my ears), I also hear a ...
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Which is better in determining consonance in chords and in scales: The Harmonic Series or Simpler Ratios?
Is the answer to this question simply that both of these concepts aid in understanding which chords and intervals are consonant or is one of these discoveries actually better than the other?
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Am I hearing overtones or beats? is it normal to hear them?
I started learning piano not so long ago and there is something that's confusing me a lot: when I play some notes at the same time (chords or two notes) sometimes I hear a second higher vibrating ...
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Is there any generic motivation for building scales which are supersets of the desired key(s)?
In conventional music, the octave is divided into the twelve frequency Chromatic Scale, but then only subsets of those twelve frequencies form the key used at any given time. I understand why the ...
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"Minor arpeggio secret" and the undertone series
I was recently introduced to a "trick" sometimes known as the "minor arpeggio secret". It can be summarized as following:
If we can maintain the same tension while plucking twice, ...
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Are non-string non-aerophone instruments suitable for chordal playing?
A friend has recently told me that while string instruments and aerophones are suitable for playing chords, bells and most other instruments are not. He said the reason is that when you play a certain ...
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How can I split a sound into sinewaves, with each sine note being a different part of the overtone series?
I'm attempting to make a fake choir sound out of sine waves. For the past 5 years, I have been playing around with onlinesequencer.net. It's a very simple and limited online midi music making website ...
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How does an electric guitar waveform differ from a pure tone?
I've been writing a program that functions similar to a MIDI interpreter, but the pure tones I'm currently using very poorly resemble the actual tones produced by guitars, pianos, and other ...
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Oscillating Volume of partials of a single note on piano
This question may be better suited to the physics stack exchange but I figure I’ll ask here as well. So a month or two ago after trying to learn to overtone sing for a couple days I finally managed to ...
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What is the point of notes lower than human hearing
(Scientific pitch notation)
For example:
Organs can go down to C-1
Hyperbass Flute goes down to C0
And these notes have neglegible overtones on these instruments!
Do they modulate other notes?
They ...
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Schoenberg notation [duplicate]
In Theory of Harmony section 4 on the major mode and diatonic chords by Schoenberg, he writes,
A musical sound is a composite, made up of a series of tones sounding together, the overtones; hence, it ...
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Cello pressed at half length higher than harmonic?
I was playing around with harmonics on my e-cello, and noticed that when pressing at the first one (half-length), the pitch was higher than when merely touching for the harmonics itself. I thought it ...
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Harmonic Series Interference
I have been analysing intervals to look at the frequency difference between harmonics.
Before my analysis I was under the impression that harmonics for 'consonant' sounding intervals contained more ...
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Why do frequencies that follow a base two logarithmic relationship sound the "same"? [duplicate]
We know that frequencies that follow a base two logarithmic relationship sound as the same tone. This seems to be one of the fundamental principles that underlies music theory. For example, ...
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Can overtones be heard if the fundamental is below hearing range?
I hope I'm using the term correctly... I think the overtone series is what one hears based on a fundamental. For example, if a C3 is played as the fundamental, the first overtone would be the octave ...
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How can our ears decide which pitch a sound is, if it has a lot of overtones?
I'm starting learning music and I see that usually sounds (say from a guitar or piano) always have a lot of frequencies (usually octave aparts, like the G string will have G3, then G4, G5 over it). ...
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Tuvan Throat singing: Get overtones louder in sygyt style
I've been practicing Tuvan throat singing, especially the Sygyt style and I am able to reliably create a range of overtones. However, I have the feeling that they are of rather low volume compared to ...
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How do tonewheel organs sound coherent?
So there are notes that the key nominally doesn't play in an organ note if the drawbars are pulled out. Yet if I pull all the drawbars out and play a chord, it sounds like a coherent chord. A C minor ...
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How do you approach consonance/dissonance when making music?
I used to think it was absurd to think of consonance/dissonance as anything but an objective measurement, but after doing more research and reading posts like this How does the harmonic series affect ...
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Simple ratios create harmonious frequencies?
I’m trying to wrap my head around consonance and dissonance in terms of the harmonic series. From what I understand, the value of having simple ratios is not because they are ‘simple’, but because the ...
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What is meant by a 'simple' frequency ratio?
For the most part, I understand the application of simple ratios when determining consonance/dissonance, but I still don’t really know what makes one ratio more ‘simple’ than another. What really ...
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Why does this chord sound like a very tense C minor when it isn't spelt like C minor at all?
So I have listened to Gustav Holst's The Planets before, especially the first movement, Mars. And in Mars I hear an outright rhythmic and harmonic war. And at the ending I hear a lot of tense C chords ...
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Where can I find the harmonic profile for each instrument?
I'm doing a project on instrument detection using the harmonic profile of each instrument. The idea is that the relative amplitudes of the harmonics will allow me to identify what instrument is ...
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How do harmonic tones get "out of tune" on a brass instrument?
In a video I saw, a guy was reviewing a prototype trombone, and he said that "the high f is out of tune" (the sixth overtone) I don't understand how a fixed length of tubing (1st position) can produce ...
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Why do I hear tritone overtones when I play my G string very softly?
When I play the G string on my violin exceptionally softly, among the sympathetic overtones I hear is a diminished fifth. Why is this? Is this specific to my particular instrument? Out of curiosity,...
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Flutes in octaves sounds like an organ? Why does this happen?
I have noticed something when I hear 2 flutes in octaves or a flute and piccolo playing the same notated notes, sounding an octave apart. It starts to not sound like a flute. In particular it sounds ...
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Vocal technique: Why is Smiling Used to Sharpen Notes?
A very common technique in singing is to smile in order to brighten the tonality of a given note and raise the pitch of the note.
When it comes to raising the pitch of the note, is it the overtones ...
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Do sine waves (pure tones) have overtones?
I was told in my music theory lessons that most sounds we hear in our everyday life contain partials which make up the timbral quality of that sound, whilst the sound musical instruments generate ...
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Research on sound production in flutes: How do angle and position of the airstream affect the 2nd octave?
In flutes, the sound is produced when a thin, laminar airstream is divided by an edge, exciting vibrations of the air inside the flute.
I would like to know whether there exists research on how the ...
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Are there any instruments that don't produce overtones?
Essentially all instruments produce overtones, which are frequencies
other than the dominant frequency of the note.
-- How do harmonics work?
The use of "essentially" there got me thinking. Are ...
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How to Achieve This Guitar Tone in Guitar Rig [closed]
I found Gorgeous cover song on youtube . i just really like to achieve this tone . in fact i like this tone better than the original one.
Thanks , Much Appreciated.
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Is there a correlation between presence of harmonics and dissonance?
If one were to take a chord or scale or other harmonic structure, and amplify the volume of the overtones of each note relative to the fundamental, would the structure be perceived by audiences as ...
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What is brightness?
I hear the term get thrown around a lot, and it seems pretty nebulous. Usually, it's invoked under the heading of tone, but I've heard it linked to intonation and a handful of other categories. At the ...
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How can it be explained that the natural fifth of an euphonium is not in the “natural fifth pitch?
I practice with 3 different Euphoniums, a brass-instrument like a small tuba. One of them - a Yamaha training instrument with 4 valves in a row - has a bad intonation at the natural fifth (upper G) ...
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Why don't tuning forks produce overtones?
I want to know how a tuning fork can produce a pure tone.
I do not understand the process because I know, although not sure, the presence of air inside an instrument introduces the harmonics of the ...
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How to get a better altissimo tone?
I'm currently practicing my overtone series and trying to get a play some altissimo. Right now, I've been able to play up to a D7 using Sigurd Rascher's Top Tones for the Saxophone, but the notes are ...
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How to create the minor/major scales on the piano? [duplicate]
If I sit down in front of a piano, how do I arrive at the minor/major scales?
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Where did the diatonic scales come from? [duplicate]
I was wondering how the diatonic scales came about? Like the major scale for instance, what is the reasoning of chosig just those notes? I've heard that the pentatonik scale comes from the overtone ...
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Whats the role or practical use of the harmonic series in music?
If two sine waves can create harmony without the harmonics then what role/function does the harmonic series have in music outside of timbre? Is there any practical use for it?
Edit: What do the ...
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How does the perfect fifth truly work?
If I play a perfect fifth on the piano using C4 and G4 they sound consonant.
And If I start on C4 and play out the harmonic series in order I wont come across the note G4 but only the G5 an octave ...
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Why don't we use the early overtones in order from a Harmonic series to create chords/scales?
In the harmonic series on the piano, If I play the note C(256) I get the next harmonics:
I was wondering why we use the notes much later in the series then the first ones? Why do we rearrange them ...
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Prevailing theories about discovery of harmonic intervals
Are there any prevailing theories for how Paleolithic man discovered and shared knowledge about harmonic intervals?
EDIT: I'm not referring to the mathematical characterization of the overtone ...
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In a musical note (A for an example) are all the other frequencies harmonic?
In a musical note (A for an example) are all the other frequencies harmonic (integer multiples)? Is there any inharmonic frequencies in A?
Edit: A4 on the piano for example.
Im very grateful for ...
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shepherd effect and continuity effect
As far as I have understood a Shepherd tone is a combination of overtones of different octaves between them, for instance F0, 2F0, 4F0 and 8F0. Is this true?
I do not quite understand what the ...
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What are overtones?
Can someone please explain what overtones are and why they are important? I read a lot on the web about them but didn't understand. Also how can they be used when writing for orchestration?
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How do I practice overtones on the saxophone?
I've read through What are the best techniques to play overtones in the saxophone? but I can't seem to move forward. I've gotten to the point where I can play the first harmonic, as in an octave above,...
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How to understand a minor chord using the harmonic series?
I play bass guitar and I have often wondered why a bass note would synchronise well with both major and minor chords of say a piano when we consider the harmonic series.
For instance, the C Major is ...
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How can a force on a tone be in two different directions at the same time? What's the practical ramification of that force?
At the bottom of the first page of Ch. 4 of Harmonielehre, Schoenberg talks about two forces acting on C. One force pulls downward toward F, the other upward toward G. He then analogizes C to a man ...
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Why is a Perfect Fourth Considered Consonant? [duplicate]
I've been doing some research into the harmonic series lately. What I've come to understand is that the lower the ratio between the harmonics, the more pleasant/consonant the interval is. So, an ...
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