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Musical Tones



To better understand what sound is we need to dig into his characteristics. The sound we hear in the music is mostly a result of a vibratory disturbance of the atmosphere and objects in the environment. We can all this - sound waves! 

Sound waves can have different shapes. When the waves are chaotic, jumbled, we can refer to it as noise. But sound waves can be also regular, ordered and patterned. This sound waves create music rather then noise, and are mostly produced by musical instruments. 

 Most musical instrument ( including synthesisers ) are made to produce sounds that have regular, harmonic characteristics. This we call tones. Our music is formed by tones, for example melodies and harmony. Each tone was couple parameters that is crucial to understand : pitch, intensity and tone quality.

Pitch or Frequency 

All musical tones have certain pitch or frequency. The pitch of a musical note refers to how low, or how high the note is in the overall pitch register. This means that bass sounds are lower in pitch than treble sounds are. If we look at the image of a sound wave, we can say that the pitch on the sound is the length of the sound wave. So for example imagine lower pitched sounds having relatively long wavelengths, while the higher pitched sounds have short wavelengths. 

Pitch is also refer as frequency. This is normally measured in Hertz (Hz) with means sound waves per second. The range of human hearing starts from 20Hz to 20kHz (kilo hertz). Also interesting to know that human can't hear all the frequency, and more precise what we call sub-audible sounds and super-audible sounds. This frequency are used in communication by some animals such as elephants and alligators. For the super audible sounds we all heard about dog whistle. 



Intensity or Amplitude 

Intensity is also know as volume, or how loud or soft is the sound. If the frequency of the sound is about the length , the intensity of the sound is about the hight of the sound wave. High intensity sounds produce more loud volume comparing with low intensity sounds. The volume is measured in db. 
A 0db volume we have quiet. Human voice at a level or normal conversation creates a 70db volume. In most of the DAWs the intensity of volume of sounds is mostly called velocity. The velocity of individual tracks will help us create  a mix and give sense of realism to our sounds. 

Tone Quality or Waveform

Tone quality is also refer as tone colour or  timbre.  This is the property that enables the ear to distinguish between the sound of a bass and a pad, for example. The tone of the pad is more rich and warmth compared with the tone of the bass. 

Let's take for example a string instrument. When we hit a string, the string vibrates at a particular speed. As we mentioned above the speed determines the frequency ( in cycles per second ) and therefor also the pitch of the note. A string instrument has also modes of vibration, which are fractional lengths such as halves, thirds, quarters, fifths etc.  

The first mode is called fundamental frequency. This determines the pitch of the note. 
The second mode is called second partial, and this mode produces a double frequency  then the fundamental.
The third mode is called third partial. And as we can anticipate it created a triple frequency comparing it to the fundamental. 

And so on. We can extend to infinity . 

One more thing to be noted is that partials whose frequency represent a whole number multiples of the fundamental frequency is called harmonics. 

A harmonic series  is a succession of partials such as 100 Hz, 200Hz , 300Hz and so on. Most of the instruments we know produce harmonic partials. 

Now if we are wondering why we should know all this, is because in music production you will meet with this basic fact. Using an EQ you can attenuate the upper  harmonics of a note, making the sound more bright. In apposition, you can suppress the upper harmonics making the sound more dull. 

Note: "The secret of successful equalisation lies in getting the balance just right " 

To understand the harmonic series of a note is important because it will tell you witch note will harmonise with. This is because notes have common harmonics. 


Synthesisers

Now let's have a look at electronic music instruments, such as a synthesisers. The sound-producing component of a synth is called oscillator. This is capable of producing both frequency and harmonics. 

One of the most basic form of wave is the sine wave, which is composed by only  one specific frequency. Other waveforms that we usually meet are : square, triangle and saw.  

Square wave: produces notes of a quite hallow sound. ( usually used for creating bass lines. )
Triangular wave: produces a clear note sound. 
Sawtooth wave: is extremely rich in harmonics. ( usually used in imitating strings, basses, leads ) 


To synthesise a sound we need to look into the sound envelope that had four components : attack, decay, sustain and release. 

Attack represents the way in which the sound starts from an initial low to a pick value. 
Decay is the way the sounds fades away.
Sustain is the period during which the peak value is maintained. 
Release is the time that takes for the sound to disappear once the note has been released. 



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