Combination tone - the sound of ghost - hearing the non existence

When you play two tones in different frequencies, there is always a combination tone, a faint tone produced in the inner ear by two simultaneously sounded musical tones. It is more audible in higher volume and pitches. 

Here is a pure data demo. Try to sing the third tone when you hear two tones in the beginning.

Can you sing the third tone before it is played?

The third tone is the different tones of the playing frequencies. In the demo, 1000-800=200. So you can "hear" and sing the 200Hz tone. But it is not played in real-life since the interference makes you hear it👻. 

Interference of two soundwaves

For more info, you may look into the page of combination tone in Britannica.

To explore this phenomenon further, we now have three tones playing at the same time 1000, 800, and 600 Hz. Both combination tones are 1000-800=200Hz and 800-600=200 Hz. Our brain can work backwards to generate the fundamental and the harmonic series. (f, 2f, 3f, 4f, 5f,...) The fundamental is 200Hz. The second harmonic is 2f = 400 Hz also the combination tone of 1000-600. These are the ones that have been playing 3f is 600Hz, 4f is 800Hz, 5f is 1000Hz. Try to sing the fundamental.



Let's put it into practice, the haunting sound is very useful for coloring the music or tone painting. This is an actual application from my work, At Night for tenor and piano. The tenor sings the result of the combination of the piano. The timbre, and text painting the nighttime haunting atmosphere of the poem.
At Night for tenor and piano



Location: HQJ5+J6 Mindrum, 英國

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post-spectralism influence on tuning

According to Helmholtz (2011), a musical note is due to the fundamental frequency and the quality of a musical sound is due to the presence of upper partials. For traditional western music, pitch perception is mainly fundamental, rather than the frequencies in the spectrum which Teodorescu-Ciocanea (2003) describes as a “note proper” tradition. The spectralism composers shifted the domain from absolute pitches, intervals and chords to the spectrum. Spectral music is a complex approach to timbre, Teodorescu-Ciocanea (2003) classified 9 tendencies and their possibilities in spectral music. To conclude the techniques, tuning the frequencies according to the harmonic series is the major approach; while working with noise, generated digitally and/or extended techniques on instruments, is a sort of timbral dissonance which dilutes the pitch perception of a musical sound. Teodorescu-Ciocanea describes inharmonicity as the combination of frequencies that are not integral multiples of the funda
Read more

Haba's field shifting - and the expansion of traditional functional harmony

Image
Hába characterizes the quarter-tone gamut as separated into two fields, one half comprising the twelve conventional pitches, and the other half, shifting all the twelve notes by a quarter-tone, the twelve quarter-tone pitches. In harmony, Passages occur in which chords composed purely of conventional pitches alternate with chords composed purely of quarter-tone pitches. Two fields are not always rejecting each other when he equally divided a perfect 4th (5 semitones)into 2 equal intervals, equal 2.5 for each, the 0.5 quartertones always step into the other field. Sometimes, this fourth interval can be further divided into 2.5+2+0.5 or other permutations. This kind of splitting a fourth can be traced to ancient greek tetrachord, a scale of four notes, bounded by the interval of a perfect fourth. A chord across both fields, the chord spell like a flatter dominant 7th chord. the 7th harmonic on harmonic series is quite flat (-31cents). This chord combines both fields sounds better accordi
Read more

Temperament, Tuning, and Timbre -- the underrated trinity in music

 The trinity here is not about the Christianity faith, but similar to the idea of the Christian doctrine of it defines God as being one God existing in three coequal, the core and fundamental definition, temperament, tuning, and timbre (TTT) are the basic building blocks of music, yet, underrated and even neglected in our music education system. TTT correlates with each other. A note is played, it carries out a series of frequencies, the harmonic series. The series multiples from the fundamental frequency with a series of integers (1f 2f 3f 4f 5f 6f 7f 8f 9f 10f 11f 12f 13f...). The loudness of individual particles, and different patterns, creates different timbres. View the series in a different way, the combination of the integers creates intervals. The combination of the beginning of the series sounds more harmonious and vice versa; simple ratios sound pure and vice versa. The pure perfect 5th interval is based on the ratio of 2:3 (2nd and 3rd harmonics at the same time), Pytheogoro
Read more