Tag: hearing

How and with Which Instruments Is the Pitch of a Non-Musical Sound Measured?
Sound refers to the aural impression produced by an acoustic wave. Understanding the nuances of music is essential for telling it apart from “non-musical” noise. The term “music” refers to any sequence of sounds that has been arranged in a certain way. It may be described in terms of pitch, duration, and timbre. If you can’t identify the pitch, what you’re hearing isn’t sound; it’s just noise.
It’s possible to make a noise by hitting any item, but it’s usually not the same as a musical instrument’s sound since the pitch of the noise can’t be pinpointed to a certain note on the musical scale.
Noise is a very intricate frequency combination in which no one frequency can be isolated as the dominant force. This is true of percussion instruments such as drums, bass drums, and cymbals.
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Xylophones, timpani, and bells are all examples of instruments in which a single frequency predominates while nevertheless producing a distinct pitch. The percussion instruments all have this characteristic manner of emission.
The term “percussion instruments” refers to a broad class of musical instruments that produce audible vibrations when hit, shaken, or rubbed. The sound is produced by the entire item vibrating and releasing air molecules. Musicologists have given them the label “idiophones” because of their unique abilities.
There are musical instruments here whose sounds cannot be placed on a musical scale. They might emphasize the music’s rhythm by highlighting its prominent beats, or they can provide a distinct hue to certain sections of the score.
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In contrast, some may be identified by their pitch note and have a melodic function.
Common noise-measuring tools include the sound level meter, audio meter, and integrated sound level meter.
In terms of its “pitch,” a sound wave is what we hear. Scientists use the term “compression wave” to describe the phenomenon of air vibration. This wave travels through the air at a pace of around 1080 feet (330 meters) per second, therefore conveying audible vibrations.
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The frequency of an object is defined as the rate of vibration in cycles per second. Frequency is measured in hertz, often abbreviated Hz. The frequency of a sound wave is what gives it its pitch. On a tuning fork, the A note has a frequency of 440 hertz. This translates to a frequency of 440 oscillations per second for the blades.
In the same way that decibels can be measured using a sound level meter, “pitch” may also be quantified in this way. There is a sweet spot for human hearing somewhere between 500 Hz and 6 kHz, and your sensitivity drops off significantly outside of that range. Sound level meters and dosimeters rely on frequency weightings to accurately record and report the decibels we’re exposed to. There are built-in electronic filters that can be employed to modify the sensitivity of the instrument’s noise measurements.
The frequency and intensity of a sound are two different things. Low-pitched sounds have a low frequency, whereas high-pitched ones have a high frequency. Thus, hertz (Hz) is the unit of frequency measurement.
The louder the sound, the greater the amplitude of the vibration; conversely, the weaker the sound, the smaller the amplitude. It is commonly expressed in decibels (dB).
November 10, 2022
Why does our musical scale have eight tones?
Melodies are created by stringing together a variety of tones in order to create music. Intervals are the lengths between tones in a piece of music. If you want a piece of music to sound especially harmonic to human hearing, the intervals between the tones are quite influential. Tones are most often symbolized in our society by the notes that make up the musical scale. An octave is comprised of eight tones, and if you add all of the semitones, there are even twelve total tones. But where exactly did this breakdown into eight or twelve steps happen in the first place? Why are some intervals on the piano scale sound more harmonic?
Tones, when seen from a purely physical perspective, are nothing more than sound waves that have a certain frequency. In this way, each tone can be assigned a frequency. C0, located at the lower end of the audible range and with a frequency of 16.35 hertz, is the tone that is considered to be the lowest tone used in music. The frequency of 440 hertz is what causes a tuner to generate an A4 note, which is considered a concert pitch. The tone A5 is eight tones, or one octave, higher than the previous tone. Surprisingly, this tone has a frequency that is precisely twice as high as the previous one: 880 hertz. This relationship is the same for all tones; an octave change always means that the frequency has doubled.
The frequency of a tone is not always primarily emitted by a musical instrument, and neither is it always emitted by the human voice. If this were the case, then the sound produced by each instrument would be exactly the same. The “pure” sound of a frequency may be heard in beeps created by a computer; these sounds have a frequency known as a sine frequency. When singing or playing music, there are almost always other tones that are resonating, and these other tones are what comprise the unique sound of an instrument. “Overtones” are the term used to describe these extra tones. The basic tone of a person’s voice comes from the vocal cords. Overtones, on the other hand, come from the rest of the vocal tract, including the trachea.
Overtones determine perfect intervals
There are frequency ranges in every instrument, especially the voice, that contain frequency ranges in which there are a particularly large number of particularly strong overtones. These frequency ranges are referred to as formants. These formants are especially significant when it comes to the voice since they are the ones that govern how we interpret vowels.
Furthermore, whether singing or speaking, the formants almost always correlate to a perfect interval. This is something that we are familiar with, thanks to the musical scale. It is reasonable to assume that our earliest ancestors had an innate preference for these tones and intervals. Different tonal systems from other civilizations show that the scale used here is not the only way to play notes.
Intervals such as the octave and the fifth may be found in the music of practically every civilization on the planet. This suggests that the perception of these intervals is universal, or at the very least, shared by all individuals. It is very possible that the division of the musical scale as we know it originated from this intuitive awareness of “perfect” intervals. Certain tones and intervals just seem “correct” to our ears.
September 10, 2022
Why Nails Scratching a Blackboard Is So Unbearable?
The sound of fingernails on unpainted clay, chalk on a chalkboard, or a knife on a porcelain plate causes the majority of people to irk, cringe, or squirm, and for many, the sound is almost intolerable. It scratches, scrapes, screeches, and squeals, and it is certain to provide goosebumps. Why are we so sensitive to this sound in particular since the contributing factors to these discords are, in most cases, not harmful?
Multiple hypotheses
Quite a few researchers in the scientific community have already attempted to answer this question and have produced multiple hypotheses as a result. An Ig Nobel Prize was even given for the research that was conducted by the team at Vanderbilt University that was led by psychologist Randolph Blake. The sound of a rake being used to scrape a chalkboard was captured by Blake and his colleagues, who did the scraping in a school. Then, they broke the sound into its different frequency ranges and tried to figure out which frequencies seemed to hurt their ears the most.
Most painful are the middle-frequency bands
Surprisingly, it’s not the high, shrill frequencies that are the problem, but rather the frequencies in the middle range. When the researchers eliminated this frequency range from the noise, the majority of the individuals stated that it appeared far less disturbing. On the other hand, Blake and his colleagues heard a striking resemblance between the screaming sound and another sound, which they identified as the alarm call of chimpanzees. This ear-splitting shriek sounds very similar to fingernails scratching over a chalkboard.
Ancient roots
Is it possible that our natural reaction to these noises is a holdover from the time when early humans made sounds very similar to those as a kind of warning? In yet another piece of research, researchers from Newcastle University, led by Sukhbinder Kumar, revealed that screeching causes a normal anxiety reaction in the brain. This finding shows, at the very least, the potential. The more irritating the sound of scratching is, the more active the amygdala becomes. The amygdala is the part of the brain that is responsible for the sensation of fear.
Experiencing a resonance in the ear canal
Musicologists Michael Oehler and Christoph Reuter were even able to exactly calculate the disagreeable frequency range. According to their research, the frequency range between 2,000 and 4,000 hertz is where it screeches in a really eerie manner. They hypothesize that the form of the human ear, namely the ear canal, may be to blame for this. Resonance effects make the corresponding frequencies louder, and they also make the ear more sensitive in this area than it would be otherwise. This can make the squealing sound so painful that it hurts to hear it.
However, the relationship between cause and effect is not completely known. For example, did our ears develop to be more sensitive to alarm calls, or do apes and potentially early humans employ the frequency range that is most sensitive to communicate their warnings?
September 10, 2022