I understand how sound is generated by pressure waves vibrating the eardrum. And this makes perfect sense to me when a single sound is generating that vibration. But when multiple sounds are vibrating the eardrum at the same time (like when listening to music with different instruments and vocals) how does the brain tease those differing vibrations apart so we can hear the individual inputs…as opposed to them mixing all together into one sound; The equivalent of mixing a bunch of different paint colors together and ending up with brown.
In: Biology
Different sounds have different frequencies, meaning they beat at different rates per second. You can’t really make different sounds with the same frequency, only change the volume (how loud it is).
It’s not hard to pick those apart, it’s like picking apart threads of varying thickness. What your brain is really good at though is pickin out patterns in those threads so that when the frequency of a sound does change, you know it’s from the same source, such as a raising voice, or a changing drum beat.
Edit: Changed pitch to volume
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