I can sort of understand records mimicing the sound of instruments, but voices are so unique, how did we ever figure out the exact carving of a piece of vinyl that when you drag a needle across it, you’ll get the same sound as x or y person’s voice exactly?
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* The key thing to understand here is that literally every sound can be broken down into a series of simple sounds that are stacked together.
* Simple sounds are called “sinusoidal” and that just means if your graph them out, they take the form of a wave that smoothly transitions from positive to negative and back again (this is called a “sin wave” for short)
* If you think about how sound is created, this makes sense.
* Something vibrates back and forth.
* One moment it’s pushing the air away, the next moment it’s pulling the air back.
* Now if two things are vibrating near each other at the same time, one will be pushing and pulling the air at a slightly different rate than the other.
* Now the movement of the air starts to get complex because the vibrating things are not in sync.
* Imagine your older brother is shaking you back and forth every second.
* And then his idiot friend starts shaking you back and forth once every second and a half.
* Instead of moving back and forth smoothly, you’re going to end up getting getting yanked around.
* So now you can see, a complex sound can be created using two simple sounds.
* Instrument sounds ( or “tone color” as it’s called) are made up of relatively few simple sounds.
* Human voices have a lot more.
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