eli5: If a guitar and a flute player wanted to jam, why is the flute players note different than the guitarist?

Question

eli5: If a guitar and a flute player wanted to jam, why is the flute players note different than the guitarist?

In: Other

Answer 1

The notes have different harmonics. A flute have a very pure tone with almost just the base frequency being played. However a guitar string will not only just vibrate in its base frequency but also at the double, tripple, quadruple, half tripple, etc. frequencies. The sound of a guitar string is closer to an entire ensemble of flute players playing harmonics on top of each other. To put it in another way the waveform from the flute is almost a pure smooth sine wave while the waveform coming from a guitar string is more square and have a lot more edges to it.