Code of Music Week 11 – Thomas Tai

Designing Sounds 

Other than differences in intensity, pitch, and tone, there is a difference in timbre. I noticed more harmonic components to the flute, which was mapped on the spectrogram by multiple bumps after the fundamental frequency. However, the whistle sound was more concentrated at one single frequency which I found interesting.  The trombone had more waves at frequencies that were spread out over the entire spectrogram.

However, the flute had more harmonics centered on its fundamental frequency. Also the attack and sustain of the note were different due to the instrument design. The drums had a quick attack and release, and had few harmonics attached to it. The spectrogram showed that the noise was centered around lower frequency, but more spread out than the flute or trombone.

Humming was similar to the flute, whereas clapping produced waves that were similar to the drum machine. As I sung higher notes, I could see the spectrogram show frequencies that were higher. It was interesting to see that our voice is not a perfect sine wave but rather has harmonic components like any other instruments.

Piece of music that is interesting in terms of timbre

I found this piece interesting because it used cups of water to create notes. In the original piece, they use an instrument called a celesta. When the strings are hit by hammers, they produce a soft, bell-like sound. If you didn’t see the video, you probably wouldn’t be able to guess what produced the sound. We can create almost identical sounds with materials around us, or generate those sounds with our computers.

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