The Shape of Music

Today our whole group was able to come. We brought our instruments to examine their wave shapes on the oscilloscope. The instruments included a flute, piccolo, clarinet, alto sax., violin, cello, and tuner. We all played a concert A- 440 and looked at the curves each instrument made. Each instrument had a unique picture. For example, the cello's waves were more rough than the piccolo's waves.

Procedure

The procedure started with someone playing a concert A on their instrument. Another person held the microphone near different places of the instrument. A third person changed the settings on the oscilloscope to make the waves come out as clear as possible. Finally, someone took a picture of the person and the oscilloscope image, and someone recorded the picture number. This step made it easy to identify each picture when we were putting them on the website. This was all repeated for each instrument.



TUNING TONE


FLUTE


CELLO


ALTO SAX.


CLARINET


VIOLIN


PICCOLO


CONCLUSION

Different instruments have different amounts of overtones. In addition, overtones that we observe on the oscilliscope change as we move the location of the microphone. The more overtones an instrument has, the richer the sound it produces.