MUSI

Sound
C
MUSIC

• Sounds that have been

deliberately produced to make a
regular pattern.

• Have a regular pattern of pitches,

or notes.
NOISE
• Group of sounds with no
regular pattern.

• Irregular and disorganized

Natural
Frequency

• Every object will vibrate at a

certain frequency.
• Music is created by vibrations.
When you sing, your vocal cords
vibrate. When you beat a drum,
the drumhead vibrates. When you
play a guitar, the strings vibrate.
Natural
Frequency

What determines Natural

Frequency?
• Resonance
• Overtones

Resonance
• occurs when an object is made to vibrate at
its natural frequencies by absorbing energy
from a sound wave or another object
vibrating at these frequencies.
Natural
Frequency

What determines Natural

Frequency?
• Resonance
• Overtones

Overtones
•A tuning fork produces a single frequency,
called a pure tone.
• If you play a single note on a guitar, the pitch
that you hear is the lowest frequency
produced by the vibrating string. The
lowest frequency produced by a vibrating
object is the fundamental frequency.
• The vibrating string also produces higher
frequencies. These higher frequencies are
Musical Scales

• Stringed Instruments
• Percussion
• Brass and Woodwinds
Musical Scales

• Stringed Instruments
Different methods are
used to make the strings
vibrate—guitar strings are
plucked, piano strings are
struck, and a bow is slid across
cello strings. The strings often
are made of wire. The pitch of
the note depends on the length, Amplifying Vibrations The sound produced by a
diameter, and tension of the vibrating string usually is soft. To amplify the
string—if the string is shorter, sound, stringed instruments usually have a hollow
narrower, or tighter, the pitch chamber, or box, called a resonator, which contains
increases. air. The resonator absorbs energy from the
vibrating string and vibrates at its natural
frequencies.
Musical Scales

• Percussion

Percussion instruments such as

drum are struck to make a sound.
Striking the top surface of the drum
causes it to vibrate. The vibrating
drumhead is attached to a chamber
that resonates and amplifies the sound.

Drums and Pitch Some drums have

a fixed pitch, but some can be tuned
to play different notes.
Musical Scales
• Brass and Woodwinds

Just as the bars of a xylophone

have different natural frequencies, so do
the air columns in pipes of different
lengths. Brass and woodwind
instruments are essentially pipes or
tubes of different lengths that
sometimes are twisted around to make
them easier to hold and carry. To make
music from these instruments, the air in
the pipes is made to vibrate at various
frequencies.
Beats
Beats
Suppose two notes close in
frequency are played at the same time.
The two notes interfere to form a new
sound whose loudness increases and
decreases several times a second. If you
were listening to the sound, you would
hear a series of beats as the sound got
louder and softer. The beat frequency, or
the number of beats you would hear each
second, is equal to the difference in the
frequencies of the two notes.

For example, if the two notes have

frequencies of 329 Hz and 332 Hz, the beat
frequency would be 3 Hz. You would hear the
sound get louder and softer—a beat—three
times each second.
 Beats
Reverberation

Sound is reflected by hard surfaces. In

an empty gymnasium, the sound of your voice
can be reflected back and forth several times by
the floor, walls, and ceiling. Repeated echoes of
sound are called reverberation

In a gym, reverberation makes the sound

of your voice linger before it dies out. Some
reverberation can make voices or music sound
bright and lively. Too little reverberation makes
the sound flat and lifeless. However,
reverberation can produce a confusing mess of
noise if too many sounds linger for too long.
The EAR
 The EAR

You hear sounds with your ears. The

ear is a complex organ that is able to detect a
wide range of sounds. The ear can detect
frequencies ranging from about 20 Hz to
about 20,000 Hz. The ear also can detect a
wide range of sound intensities. The faintest
sounds you can hear carry about one trillionth
the amount of energy as the loudest sounds
you can hear.

It has three parts—the outer ear, the middle

ear, and the inner ear.
 The Outer Ear

Sound Collector Your outer ear

collects sound waves and directs them into
the ear canal. Notice that your outer ear is
shaped roughly like a funnel. This shape helps
collect sound waves.
 The Middle Ear

Sound Amplifier When sound

waves reach the middle ear, they vibrate
the eardrum, which is a mem- brane that
stretches across the ear canal like a
drumhead. When the eardrum vibrates, it
transmits vibrations to three small
connected bones—the hammer, anvil, and
stirrup. The bones amplify the vibrations,
just as a lever can change a small
movement at one end into a larger
movement at the other.
 The Inner Ear

Sound Interpreter The stirrup

vibrates a second membrane called the oval
window. This marks the start of the inner ear,
which is filled with fluid. Vibrations in the
fluid are transmitted to hair-tipped cells lining
the cochlea.
Different sounds vibrate the cells in
different ways. The cells generate signals
containing information about the frequency,
intensity, and duration of the sound. The
nerve impulses travel along the auditory
nerve and are transmitted to the part of the
brain that is responsible for hearing.
The EAR
Hearing Loss

The ear can be damaged by disease, age, and

exposure to loud sounds. For example, constant
exposure to loud noise can damage hair cells in the
cochlea. If damaged mammalian hair cells die, some loss
of hearing results because mammals cannot make new
hair cells. Also, some hair cells and nerve fibers in the
inner ear degenerate and are lost as people age. It is
estimated that about 30 percent of people over 65 have
some hearing loss due to aging.
 Generalization
Sound Waves

• Sound waves are compressional waves produced by vibrations.

• Sound travels fastest in solids and slowest in gases.
• Sound travels faster as the temperature of the medium increases.
• The energy carried by a sound wave increases as its amplitude increases.

Loudness and Pitch

• Loudness is the human perception of the energy carried by a sound wave.

• The pitch of a sound becomes higher as the frequency of the sound increases.

The Doppler Effect and Diffraction

• In the Doppler effect, the frequency of a sound wave changes if the source of
the sound is
moving relative to the listener
• Diffraction occurs when sound waves bend around objects or spread out after passing
trough an opening.
Generalization
Music

• Music is sound that is deliberately produced in a regular pattern.

• Objects vibrate at certain natural frequencies.
• The lowest frequency produced by a vibrating object is the objects fundamental
frequency.
• The overtones produced by a vibrating object are multiples of the fundamental
frequency.

Musical Instruments and Hearing

• In stringed instruments the sounds made by vibrating stings are amplified by a

resonator.
• Percussion instruments produce sound by vibrating when they are struck.
• Brass and woodwind instruments produce sound by vibrating a column of air.
• The ear collects sound waves, amplifies the sound, and interprets the sound.