source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 13:23:01 -0800 Subject: Sympathetic Strings, Partials, Nodes, and Sitars. From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@compuserve.com> > > I really think it's fair to say that all of the common string and wind > > instruments have partials at frequencies sufficiently close to harmonics > > that, for the vast majority of musical purposes, they can be considered > > practically harmonic. > Do you still have this information? How close is close? I don't think I still have exact measurements of real-instrument deviations from exact harmonics lying around. I don't think I ever printed them out. And last I checked, my near-harmonic tone decomposition and resynthesis program was in a rather chaotic state. It will need some changes to be reversed and reimplemented before I could make those measurements again. But the comments I made in this regard, are based upon decomposing (mostly) orchestral instrument sounds and then resynthesizing them, but forcing them to have purely integer pitch relationships, and then comparing the result to the original tones. Certainly two conclusions were true: 1. Negating the aharmonicity of an instrument didn't affect the character of harmonies realized in those instrument sounds more than realizing them in different timbres altogether, or in other combinations of timbres. 2. The main effect of negating aharmonicity was to make the timbres sound "dead" and mechanical, somewhat like the old Hollywood notion of a robot's voice. I think I do still have a copy of the executable version of that program that's capable of doing forced-harmonic resyntheses, by the way. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 5 Jan 1997 22:21 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA02051; Sun, 5 Jan 1997 22:24:08 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA02049 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id NAA26071; Sun, 5 Jan 1997 13:24:05 -0800 Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 13:24:05 -0800 Message-Id: <199701051619_MC2-E48-35DE@compuserve.com> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu