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?

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(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

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Anonymous 0 Comments

*Timbre* is the name for the quality of a sound. Musical instruments have timbres because they’re more than just a means to emit a tone of a certain frequency— they’re physical objects with characteristics.

Think of it like this— the fundamental note you play (frequency) is like a color. Say, the color yellow.

An egg yolk is very different from a child’s raincoat, isn’t it? Even if they’re both yellow.

In that way, the note A (440 kHz) produced by a violin is very different from that same note produced by a trumpet.

The differences are from stuff like how the sound is being produced, what amplifies it, and so on. The waveform making the sound “yellow” is accompanied by lots of overtones that carry the rest of the info.

For EL-older-than-5, look up “Fourier Transforms” and the history of synthesizers.

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