If you play the exact same same note on two different musical instruments the sound will not be the exact same. What changed and what stayed the same?

389 viewsOtherPhysics

(in the sense that you will know if you heard a piano or a guitar) what stayed the same and what changed with the sound wave? Second related question, if you get two people to say the word “hello” they will sound completely different but you will be able to hear that they both said hello. So in that case what changed with the sound wave and what stayed the same?

Sorry if it’s the wrong flair I put it as physics because sound waves so yeah

In: Physics

12 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Overtones! There’s so much more to the quality of sound – called the *timbre* (pronounced TAM-burr) than just the principle tone.

Instruments produce lots of different pitch (frequency) notes at once, mainly the [harmonic series](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_series_(music)).

The relative strength of all these tones together is what gives sound its colour. Check out the image at the top of that wikipedia article

You are viewing 1 out of 12 answers, click here to view all answers.