This is actually question my daughter posed and I’m pretty stumped. She asked how, if two people with (let’s say) perfect pitch sing a song, how is it possible that we can still tell who is singing when the notes would be identical?
Note: I know absolutely nothing about music, but figured this was the best place to ask for her.
Edit: Wow, many of these answers are incredible! I had no idea this would receive such in depth and thoughtful feedback. I have learned a huge amount. I was not exaggerating above when I said I know nothing about music (I don’t even know what pitch is – just quoted my daughter on that) and I’m grateful to those of you who took the time to help me learn.
In: Biology
Music teacher here.
The same way that you can have dark green and light green and green stripes and green spots and shiny green and matte green (importantly, all without changing the color towards red or blue), you can have a note come out in many different ways without changing the pitch (high-ness or low-ness of a note).
In music, this is called timbre (pronounced TAM-BER for some reason), or “Tone Color”.
As an interesting exercise, have them hit a single note, and move their mouth through the vowels.
Compare the ‘O’ sound with the “EEEE” sound. The O sounds lower, while the EEEE sounds higher, even though the pitch stays the same.
When we make sounds with our mouths, there is one main pitch, and lots of little “sub-pitches” called harmonics, that change the way the main pitch sounds.
There exists a type of note with no extra harmonics, called a Sine Wave, which is only the main pitch and nothing else. YouTube can play it for you.
Latest Answers