pianoness

MaryW commented on the word pianoness

When you hear a saxophone playing a tone with a fundamental frequency of 220 Hz, you are actually hearing many tones, not just one. The other tones you hear are integer multiples of the fundamental: 440, 660, . . . . These different tones—the overtones—have different intensities, and so we hear them as having different loudnesses for these tones is distinctive of the saxophone, and they are what give rise to its unique tonal color, its unique sound—its timbre. . . . Indeed, for each instrument, there exists a unique pattern of overtones. . . . Virtually all of the tonal variation we hear—the quality that gives a trumpet its trumpetiness and that gives a piano its pianoness—comes from the unique way in which the loudnesses of the overtones are distributed.

June 19, 2017