Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Musical instrument range: am I understanding this chart correctly?

Look at this chart of "sounding ranges" of various musical instruments. I saw this @ the Magnepan User's Group (sorry for "sleeping around"!) I've been curious about this for a while, and MarkSJohnson's graph posting in the Tech Questions made me seek this out.



So, the lowest key on the piano is down around 27Hz, and the highest is around 4,100Hz? Am I reading that correctly?

It kind of surprised me that:
1)The piano goes that low (I took lessons for 11 years!)
2)The piano "only" goes that high
3)All of those instruments fall within those ranges

I guess I was just ignorant. So what instruments, sounds, etc. am I hearing *above* that top piano note? I know what's going on below the bottom note, but was surprised at how "low" the top end of the musical instrument spectrum was relative to the performance of our speakers.

Any insights greatly appreciated! If nothing else I thought others might find this interesting (and educational).

Regards,
Rich

I can't see your chart (work firewall), so here's this one:



What about harmonics? The highest pitch of a piano key might be 4 kHz and change, but there will be harmonics that come out of it that would be even higher, no?

From the site where I got the chart (PSB's site): "While the chart begins to provide a grasp of where instruments lie across the frequency range, it has some critical omissions. The pipe organ, for instance,which goes down into subterranean regions, isn't represented. Neither is the bass drum, which has lots of energy below 50 Hz. Most critically, however, the chart portrays only the fundamental tones that instruments generate. What it doesn't show is the overtones, the harmonic frequencies, that give instruments their characteristic sound — their timbre.

Harmonics are what let you tell instruments apart. Without them, similar instruments that played the same frequencies would sound the same. The harmonics are produced not by the notes, but by the method by which the musician sets those notes into motion and the materials used to produce the notes. The plucking of a string on a guitar, or the bowing of the string on a violin, is a lot different from the metallic resonance of a flute as air is blown through it by pursed lips, or the sound of a drum's membrane when it's struck by a hand or a drumstick. Everything counts — the "attack" frequencies at the onset of notes (which are tremendously different from instrument to instrument), the "decay" frequencies at the end of those notes, the various resonances set in motion by the materials used for instruments, the differences between media excited from outside (like the string or the drum) and those excited from inside, like the flute and the trumpet. And besides upper harmonics, there are also subharmonics. The world of music is incredibly rich and varied.

We could go further, but what our chart does is give you a beginning taste of what "Hz" (cycles per second) really mean musically. There are charts that show the harmonics of instruments as well as the fundamentals, but we've never seen one that shows the varying harmonic intensities of all instruments in comparison with each other. (If you have, please let us know!) As we said earlier, the point is music. While we at PSB are intent on doing justice to the sound of crashing buses and dinosaur footfalls as well as flutes and violins and snare drums, it's the sound of music that keeps our juices flowing."

Plus, obviously, we hear both low and high sounds that are non-musical in nature. Those, while not listed here, can go above those ranges. Certainly you've heard electronic squeals that go higher than a piccolo, for example!

Where would a pipe organ fall on this chart? I think it has the furthest range of all musical instruments.

Fantrastic, if semi-borrowed, response. Yup. It's all about haronics. Without them, all soundwaves would be quite boring: sawtooth (jarring), square (raspy), or sine (smooth).

Engine_Joue
Too funny, but I can't see your chart!

Thanks for the insight. Got it. I've always known about harmonics, but I guess it never really hit me until now.

The chart also gave me some insight in cross-over points for speakers. It's all coming together for me now!!

Thanks to all.
Rich

Yeah Rich, it's mainly the harmonics of the fundamental tone which make instruments sound different. Without them, for example, a flute playing at 400Hz would sound like a trumpet at the same frequency. So, although the fundamental tones of the instruments don't go much above 4KHz, the harmonics up to our limit of hearing(20KHz possibly, but less for most of us at realistic levels)are an important part of the musical experience.

This shows a guitar peaking out at 700Hz for it's fundamental? Can that be right?

Apparently so, Mark. Here's probably more than you ever wanted to know about guitars.

"This shows a guitar peaking out at 700Hz for it's fundamental? Can that be right?"

Mark--

That's *exactly* the kind of thing that blew me away when I looked at the chart. It was hard to believe.

Rich