#overtone series

[usfrumpleteazer]

I saw this picture on some random Google search about French Horns. They were saying that they used this to explain playing the Horn to a pianist. So true! When you can play almost a whole scale using only one fingering, you know your instrument has issues.

[furtivefootling]

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[classical-nerd]

A look into the way strings vibrate, which affects how we perceive our music.

Classical Nerd is a weekly video series covering music history, theoretical concepts, and techniques, hosted by composer, pianist, and music history aficionado Thomas Little.

[dendroica]

The hermit thrush is a common, medium-sized, North American songbird whose song has attracted the attention of ornithologists and musicologists for more than a century. Early 20th-century studies claimed that hermit thrush song follows the same principles found in human musical systems, but these were anecdotal reports which were not supported by a rigorous analysis. However, a new study conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Vienna, Austria, the Cornish College of the Arts, USA, and the Philipps University of Marburg, Germany, shows that hermit thrush song indeed uses notes that are generally related by simple integer proportions, like much human music. Moreover, the notes used in each song are mostly drawn from the same overtone series, meaning that they are multiples of the same underlying frequency. To arrive at this conclusion, Emily Doolittle (Cornish College of the Arts) and Tecumseh Fitch (University of Vienna) analyzed high-quality recordings of the songs of 14 male hermit thrushes. Bruno Gingras (University of Vienna) and Dominik Endres (Philipps University of Marburg) then used two different statistical methods to demonstrate that the notes of the hermit thrush song were, in most cases, simple integer multiples of a base frequency, corresponding to an overtone series. The authors controlled for other possible explanations, such as the possibility that hermit thrushes could select notes using the resonances of their vocal tract in a manner similar to wind instruments like the alphorn. Their results thus strongly suggest that hermit thrushes actively select the pitches they sing. Although further research is needed to explain why hermit thrushes choose to sing pitches whose relationship follows the harmonic series, one possibility, mentioned by the authors, is that female hermit thrushes may evaluate a male's singing accuracy by its ability to follow the overtone series. Another possibility is that, like humans, hermit thrushes find it easier to remember or process pitches that follow the overtone series.

Hermit Thrush follow an overtone series -- ScienceDaily

[cardsout]

"Classical music in the womb": an aesthetic/moral argument from sociopolitical conservatism

Re: Rameau's work on the primacy of the overtone series, here's something contemporary to think about as an add-on: 21c arguments for the benefits of hearing classical music for a fetus. Rameau's arguing that tonal harmonies are scientifically better than other types of music/harmonies; over the past decade, we've heard from several sources that classical music can be assessed as building/building from evolutionary advantage for (future) humans. In both, what's lacking is any up-front acknowledgment of the implicit understanding underlying both positions--Rameau recognizes/forwards the overtone series as best because he's smack dab in its rise to hegemonic super-cession of Western and eventually global musics; the "babies-need-Bach"ers spend their Saturdays picketing at Planned Parenthood. Gestational food for, eh? 

[practiceapps]

What is up with Noises?

The Overtone series, audio physics, your ear. Told in a very cool way.