source file: m1484.txt
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 15:44:08 -0500

Subject: Re: TUNING digest 1481

From: Gary Morrison <mr88cet@texas.net>

Dr_Orient wrote:

> You're on the right track. The simplest acoustic timbre (to my knowledge) is that
> of the flute, which approaches a pure sine wave (fundamental).

   That is a widely-held misconception.  Almost all flute tones have a LOT of
overtone content.  As with most winds, they have more overtone content in their
lower register, and less in higher registers.  I'll attempt to ftp to where anybody
who's interested can find it, a GIF file of a spectral decomposition of a flute
tone.

   A tuning fork is however, indeed pretty much a sinewave, which means that a
"Rhodes"-style electric piano should be too.  After the attack transient, a
vibraphone and glockenspiel have almost all of their energy in just two or three
overtones, but they have a huge amount of wildly nonharmonic overtone content during
the attack transient.