Searching for New Sound - Music Composition ideas

The harmonic series can generate consonant intervals and even chords from lower harmonic order. Western classical music practice echoes the harmonic series. Percussion instruments are famous for their inharmonicity. In contrast to the common practice, but I follow the same steps by generating chords and harmony from the spectra of inharmonicity. The inharmonicity is due to the irregular shape of an instrument. Standard orchestral-tuned percussion instruments, they can be categorised with the shape of membrane, a bell, a bar and a plate (Dunn et al, 2015). I recorded Here are the chords from the instruments.  Crotales A6 Marimba A4 Tubular bell A3 I picked the strongest partials in the spectra and rearranged them for composition material as the chords below. In my composition for the percussion instruments, the note sets are based on them, the harmony reinforced the spectra (and vice versa) in percussion instruments and escaped from the traditional tonal system idiomatically from th...

For percussion containing wood or metal bars with free ends, the pattern of harmonic partials is irregular. Sethares (2010) calculated the pattern of the first 6 partials as:         f, 2.76f, 5.41f, 8.94f, 13.35f, and 18.65f P.1 Then, I calculated and draw the dissonant curve: The dissonant curve After that find the frequencies with consonant intervals, the green frequencies below come from the simple ratios from the harmonic pattern (P.1) and the blue one comes from the curve. The middle column is the ratios between each consonant step. consonant freq. ratio b/w each log(octave)/ log(r between) 220 259.2 1.178181818 4.126597564 302.5 1.167052469 4.380129661 329.6296296 1.089684726 7.878224355 362.3290203 1.099200399 7.154014395 432.8 avg 1.133529853 5.884741494 The main concept of finding the best number of equal temperaments is to capture all of the consonant steps as close as possible with limited steps within a reasonable range. (For example, 120 steps with an o...

 When an instrument is played, when put the sound into the spectrum analysis (Fast Fourier Transform), there are multiple tones sounding at the same time, which contributes to the timbre of each instrument. For most instruments, strings, winds, and voice, the frequencies of vibration follow the pattern of harmonic series. Different loudness of individual harmonics contributes to the unique timbre of each instrument. Harmonic series follows the pattern from the whole multiples of the fundamental frequency (f,2f,3f,4f,5f, etc). However, the inharmonic percussion instruments do not follow the harmonic series, thus, this pattern is called inharmonicity. The timbre, as Sethares (2010) describes, is gong-like or bell-like. The spectrum analysis of some iconic orchestral sounds can be found in my previous article . For percussion containing wood or metal bars with free ends, the pattern of harmonic partials is irregular. Sethares (2010) calculated the pattern of the first 6 partials as: ...

 I discussed the harmonic pattern of bells in the previous article. Spectra of percussion instruments are often irregular, that is the reason why the timbre of each percussion instrument is special. For percussion containing wood or metal bars with free ends, the sequence of harmonic partials is irregular. Sethares (2010) calculated the pattern of the first 6 partials as:          f, 2.76f, 5.41f, 8.94f, 13.35f, and 18.65f It is assumpted that the bar is perfect even thickness and density. The resonators under the bars also tune back the partials to adjust closer to the harmonic series. Marimba, vibraphone, and xylophone have resonators underneath. The examples below show the first several partials are adjusted, not quite fitting Setheres's calculation. This is a spectrum of marimba, as roughly follows the sequence above. Marimba on note A3 This is a spectrum of vibraphone, it partly follows the traditional harmonic series at the beginning, but the second ...