idiot's guide to sound of music

[veeyens3]

I have some lingering doubts and as the participants in Hari Nama Sangeerthnam are encouraged to sing “nissrujja lajjAnAm” casting away their inhibition, ” I am voicing them casting away any inhibitions The physicists in the group may be able to dispel my doubts, not like Dakshinamoorthy who dispelled the doubts of aged Rishis by a simple hand gesture but in normal language understood by common man

If a violonist aligns his instrument to suit the voice of .the vocalist, it means the sound produced by the violin and r\the vocal chords oscillate in the same frequency. Right?If the audio signals are fed into a osclloscope,they will produce identical patterns Right Then what determines which is human voice and which is the sound produced by the violin? When the violin and human voice are in the same basic frequency and different octaves, they do not sound discordant because the nodes coincide. Then what differentiates the violin and the human voice. In my younger (I too was young once upon a time) I was told when we sing we develop not only the basic or main frequency but its harmonics also , the place of the harmonics is different for each type of sound, I was also told that the donkey's braying produces the seventh harmonics. I do not know if this is correct or some one pulled my legs. I am all eager to learn (even at this age). May Sri Rama bless you

[arunk]

I dont know about donkey braying and seventh harmonics , but in general they are right.

My 2 cents:

When we speak, sing, or play instruments we are generating sound at a certain "pitch" which has a fundamental frequency and harmonics (frequencies that are multiples of that frequency) - they are all "mixed" or "added in together" and that adds richness to the sound (a single tone can be quite bland). One of the main aspects w.r.t difference between two such sound sources is the differing "strengths" of different harmonics (as well as presence/absence of some in one vs. the other). Other aspects would in difference in what they call "attack phase" (at the very start of note - a few milliseconds), as well as other "phases".

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbre.

(Also, a violin/flute may be following a voice at a pitch that is 1 or more octaves higher - the "tune" would appear similar if not identical even in terms of pitch values).

Arun

[mahavishnu]

Arun is spot on, as he usually is. There are more "folk" theories of why the violin sounds like the human voice, but most of these are not based on acoustics.

A reasonably good comparison of the two sounds can be found at: http://www.nagyvaryviolins.com/tonequality.html. This is from the website of Nagyvary violins, a company that specializes in recreating classic Stadivarii violins. So, I would trust their acoustic analyses. Veeyens sir, I think you will especially enjoy browsing through their site, in light of the discovery of a historic violin in your possession.

Other bits of common knowledge: In addition to surface-level similarities in frequency structure, the violin is well suited for Indian music, because of its ability to produce microtones and gamakams with ease. Another important factor is that bowing can give a continuous sound that is similar to human voicing. For sahityam based Carnatic music, it is also very appropriate because of the ability of the bow to produce short and long sounds (vallinam-mellinam) and mimic vowel/consonant pairings. Bilahari has written about this in a review of the Lalgudi siblings (iirc).

The only human vocal musical sound that has multiple overtones embedded in it is in the folk music of Tuva (a small country that borders Siberia/Mongolia). The voice is trained to produce multiple frequencies simultaneously. Incidentally, Richard Feynman and the people of Tuva were really fond of each other. He was named honorary citizen etc., even though he had not visited the country. However, I don't think Feynman spent much time studying Tuvan throat singing. More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvan_throat_singing

Now, I am in no way comparing their music to the donkey's bray; I am not sure who will be more offended. Sisurvetthi pasurvetthi vetthi gana rasam panihi! (sp?)

[vasanthakokilam]

Fascinating, Mahavishnu. Thanks for educating us about this. Humans are crazy and interesting.

There are many youtube videos demonstrating this.

here are two:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kDXGSwiRmA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTCJ5hedcVA

here is a video tutorial on how to do it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7gj0b0WZ80

there are quite a few more..look for them in the related links.

What veeyens is referring to regarding certain overtone harmonic in donkey's braying is not that far off, it looks like.

[Enna_Solven]

Moral of the story: Don't click on any wiki link. By the time you got out of wiki, the minute hand has gone around a few times... :tmi:

[vasanthakokilam]

yeah, really!! it has happened quite a few times on several other topics as well. And you discover so much fascinating stuff in the process. ( I have a side thought about if we are all getting better informed ( and 'educated' ) in this internet age, contrary to some people's beliefs that everything is going to to dogs but I will reserve it for another thread. )

[venkatakailasam]

An interesting article on

SINGING ON THE VIOLIN

- By Dr. Sriram Parasuram at:

http://www.carnatica.net/sangeet/violinsp.htm

venkatakailasam

[Nick H]

It is a pity that that is no more than the introduction: the demonstration that followed it must have been fascinating.

When we see a violinist... we understand that one hand moves the bow to make the string vibrate and produce a noise, while the fingers of the other hand stop the strings to fix the pitch of that note. Above that, us non-musicians (well, me at any rate) also see (but perhaps have limited understanding) that one violinist's performance is not like that of another, and that some even blow us away with the beauty of the sound that comes from those simple physical movements. Singing on the violin? Well, yes, but formerly I hadn't really taken that concept further than the obviously ability to produce a sustained note. How much (limitless?) subtlety there must be in that instrument!

[srikant1987]

We sometimes understand, given when told that a wave has "frequency", that it is a sinusoidal wave of that frequency. For that reason, it is advisable to say that the same musical note played on different instruments, or sung by different individuals have the same pitch. This pitch is also known as the "fundamental frequency" of the wave.

Musical waves can be of any shape, but they need to be piece-wise "periodic". Mathematically, we can arrive at different sinusoidal "components" for any periodic function -- one wave of the same frequency as the wave, and others harmonics of it. Harmonics of a sinusoidal wave of frequency f are sinusoidal waves of a frequency that is a multiple of f.

[veeyens3]

The clarifications I got from our learned rasikas, are more apropriate for the learned rishis of Darukavanam than a person of common genre like me Granting that the “code” for micro tones are generated and integrate with the principal frequency and processed along with it, then how does a keyboard generate such code by itself?In the keyboard, the playing keys generate the main frequency, the required micro tones are integrated through the various keys for each type of sound required such as flute, piano clarinet etc The keyboard being inanimate cannot generate such microtones by itself, unless given some instructions or “programmed” which is done by the designer. Obviously he cannot do it unless he knows which microtone is asssociated with the main frequency for each type of sound.
Now the quality of keyboards have improved very much with high fidelity, Obviously, it would be impossible for designers of each company to think and act identically to produce thousands of keyboards with identical characterestics. There must be some common mutually agreed and accepted reference for these codes. My query is whether this code is public property available in any bookstores or a patented .Yamaha, Casio, etc need not worry whether I am trying to be their competitor as I have enough problems on hand such as knee pain . body ache etc to keep me busy till my last days.

May Sri Rama bless you all