68
votes
Accepted
Why can't drums produce melody?
Instruments don't just produce one frequency at a time. When you play a single note on a melodic instruments (like piano, wind instruments, string instruments, etc.), you produce many different ...
- 11.3k
51
votes
Why can't drums produce melody?
The drums CAN play melodies, but the number of pitches and notes you have available are limited by the number of drums you have (not counting creative applications of "bending" the drum head to ...
- 2,578
32
votes
My guitar has no sound when the gain knob is turned off. Do all amps need need a little gain to be able to output sound?
Gain is the input level control, it decides how hard the input signal hits the preamp. Guitar amps often exploit the effect of hitting it HARD, overdriving it into distortion.
Volume controls how ...
- 94.8k
30
votes
Accepted
Why do two identical notes never cancel each other out?
If you play two sine waves of constant amplitude at the same frequency, then the result will be another sine wave. If your two sine waves are in phase, then you have a louder sinewave. if your two ...
- 46.1k
25
votes
Accepted
What is the reason a given note can have different "sounds"
Simple answer - overtones or harmonics. Each sound producing machine (instrument) has the propensity to produce not only the fundamental (first harmonic), but others too. The mix of whichever these ...
- 196k
24
votes
Accepted
How does Sitar produce sound while it doesn't have any sound holes?
The sound holes on stringed instruments are not there so that the sound can be heard. They are there to tune the resonances of the wooden bodies that amplify the sounds.
It is true that there are ...
- 57.7k
23
votes
Accepted
Why does violin sound differently after playing on it for some time?
This is a heavily-researched, and (sadly) highly inflammatory topic. There are some people who swear it takes 50 years for the varnish to reach a stable structure & stability; there are others ...
- 15k
22
votes
Do all periodic or "natural" sounds contain major chords?
No. A trivial counterexample for periodic sounds would be a sine wave, which has only one tone and therefore cannot contain a major chord. Now, many (most?) naturally created periodic sounds will ...
- 9,160
21
votes
Why can't drums produce melody?
No-one's mentioned pans - aka steel drums They certainly are used to play melodies. The main problem is that melodies usually contain long and short duration notes, and drums generally can only ...
- 196k
21
votes
What is the reason a given note can have different "sounds"
There's more to an instrument's waveform than the over-riding 'perceived pitch' frequency. There's lots of other frequencies mixed in there.
And apart from the sustain portion of a musical note (...
- 94.8k
16
votes
Accepted
Confusion about overtones and a slow-motion video of a plucked string
At a basic level, the waveshape in the image you posted is a graph of sound pressure over time, while the actual string in the video is a graph of string displacement over its length. The two are ...
- 9,160
16
votes
Confusion about overtones and a slow-motion video of a plucked string
The Fourier transform allows us to decompose the shape of the string into a collection of sinusoids which correspond to the fundamental frequency and the (mostly) audible harmonics that give the note ...
- 656
15
votes
How did baroque music sound at the time?
In many respects technological progress in music has been less about the very best sounding better than about it becoming more and more feasible to produce "good" sounds at lower and lower cost.
In ...
- 17.9k
15
votes
Accepted
How did baroque music sound at the time?
There are numerous groups such as The Academy of Ancient Music who perform baroque music using instruments constructed in the same way as baroque instruments (or in a few cases with genuine baroque ...
- 4,802
15
votes
Accepted
Is the pitch-producing mechanism for singing and humming the same or entirely different?
You can try this for yourself. Sing a note, to any vowel sound (try them all) and whilst doing so, close your lips. Now you're humming that same note. Feel any difference? Probably not, because the ...
- 196k
15
votes
Accepted
Does shape of waveform affect sonic perception?
Yes, but not directly - instead, we perceive the different amounts of energy in different harmonics. :)
To illustrate the differences, here are some graphed waveforms, and here's a YouTube video ...
- 518
15
votes
Why do two identical notes never cancel each other out?
I think the other answers underemphasize the number one factor why this doesn't happen in real life - phase. For this to happen, both waves need to arrive at your ear precisely in phase AND STAY THERE....
- 633
13
votes
What word describes the sound of an instrument based on the shape of the waveform of its sound?
It seems to me that the definition of timbre that uses "overtones" to describe qualitative differences between sounds of the same frequency and amplitude does not take into account the shape of the ...
- 46.1k
12
votes
Is the pitch-producing mechanism for singing and humming the same or entirely different?
As Tim suggested, here is some additional information. His answer, by the way, is (sorry in advance) pitch-perfect.
While the fundamental pitch depends only on the vocal cords, the overtones and ...
- 15k
12
votes
Can you turn a recording upside-down?
Theoretically, this could be done by adapting the techniques used in a vocoder.
A vocoder works by measuring the amplitude of different frequency bands in a modulator signal (e.g. vocals), and then ...
- 3,662
11
votes
What makes some instruments louder than others?
Musical instruments are transducers, which means they change one kind of energy into another. All transducers have an efficiency, which means during the change of energy, some portion of the input ...
- 57.7k
11
votes
Why can't drums produce melody?
In contrast to the question, the timpani are a drum set that can play melodies (although they are almost always given accompaniment parts only). Indeed, they are tuned to pitches (one pitch per drum) ...
- 14.2k
11
votes
How do multiple sound waves interact physically to create music?
You're asking about perception, so even though you're asking about "what happens on a physical level," it seems your question is ultimately about what's happening in our minds, not what's happening ...
- 84.9k
11
votes
Horse hooves sound in the song background
In the old days, someone woud have two halves of a coconut shell, and tap them on a hard surface. As pointed out by Tetsujin, this was back in the day - 1957, so I suspect here, it's produced in that ...
- 196k
11
votes
Are percussion instruments the only instrument type capable of making an unpitched (indefinite) sound? [Electronic instruments excluded]
No, certainly many instruments that make pitched sounds can also make unpitched. Often this means using "extended techniques," i.e. doing "weird stuff" outside of normal practice, ...
- 18.8k
10
votes
Cents vs semi-tones on guitar
For instance on one guitar A = 442 and on the other A = 467, will they sound okay together?
There will be a beat frequency of about 25 Hz between them, which would be annoying to most ears. So ...
- 57.7k
10
votes
Can you change some composition I wrote to whatever music you want just by changing the timbre of the instruments?
Destructive interference would effect what you hear, but that doesn't change the composition.
You could do other things to make a performance or playback inaudible, like move very far away or put a ...
- 58.7k
10
votes
Accepted
My guitar has no sound when the gain knob is turned off. Do all amps need need a little gain to be able to output sound?
Yes it is normal.
The gain is the volume control of the input of the amplifier.
The signal flow of the tube amplifier goes:
Gain (preamp input) to tone stack (eq) to phase inverter stage (input to ...
- 134
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible