How does sound have “texture”? How does a piano sound different from a clarinet when they play the same tone?
In: Physics
Texture can be described, very simply, as many layers of notes played at once. Bass has a line, tenor has a line, soprano and so on. A piano does this, but a clarinet cannot, because only one note can be played at a time.
Edit – not sure I was downvoted. Musical texture has three basic types: monophonic, homophonic and polyphonic.
So when you play a note, you’re actually playing a bunch of different frequencies (“harmonics”) with different intensities, not just the main frequency (“fundamental”). The different intensities of those many frequencies give the different “textures” of various instruments (“timbre”, pronounced “tamber”).
The difference you are describing is called [Timbre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbre).
There are a lot of other components of a sound beyond just its pitch and volume – how fast and sharply the wave begins (attack), how long it lasts (sustain), and how quickly it ends (decay), how much noise is in the signal, how many overlapping sound waves (harmonics) there are and where they fall in and out of phase with one another are just some of the things that go into giving a sound it’s particular tonal uniqueness.
When a tone is played, there are several harmonic frequencies that also play. Kinda like how a mother duck walks and her ducklings follow, the dominant frequency leads the tone (and is the one we hear and identify most) with harmonics being more subtle underneath. Different materials create different harmonic frequencies. These harmonics are what create the individual textures of the sound.
To add to others, on Netflix watch Storybots Season 3 How Do You Make Music? They do a good job of breaking it down.
A waveform (musical or otherwise) can be analyzed as a sum of sine waves. The sound of a tuning fork is approximately a simple sine wave. Most sounds are far more complex than that.
In an idealized musical instrument, all of the sonic energy is in waves whose frequencies are multiples (‘harmonics’) of some fundamental. The relative strengths of these component waves give a large part of the color of the sound: if the higher components are strong, the sound is ‘brilliant’, like a trumpet; if they’re weak, the sound may be called ’fat’. In a clarinet, the even multiples of the fundamental are missing.
Real physical instruments have harmonics that are *not* perfect multiples of the fundamental. This is most conspicuous in a cymbal or gong, but hints of such imperfection also give a bit of spice to many other instruments.
When we say that a note is C, most people believe that it is just one frequency *f*. However, *f* is also accompanied by its multiples, *2f*, *3f*, *4f* and so on.
Of course, not all of them have equal loudness. So, for flute, *f* might be 20 times louder than *2f*, whereas for a clarinet, it might be that *f* is only 2 times louder than *2f*.
If we complete a set of these loudness weight compared to the ratio of base frequency *f*, we will get a set of infinite numbers like (1, 0.05 (1/20 for flute as in the example above), 0.009, 0.0001…). Number become almost zero for high frequencies. Different instruments have different sets, similar sounding instruments will have more similarity than completely different sounding instruments. (This is called timbre)
EDIT: Numbers are just for the sake of examples, I don’t know exact ones.
All this explanations are focused on the musical side rather than the psychological one so I’ll give it a shot. What you are asking for is the subjective experience of different sounds. This is called qualia.
Qualia is an abstract concept that psychologists and philosophers use to describe the subjective element of an experience, e.g. the unique sound of a piano, the redness of the color red, the particular sensations you feel when you feel pain, etc.
The simple answer is that we have no idea why we have this ability, because everything that involves consciousness remains pretty much a mistery. Can an AI experience qualia? Are the qualia I experience the same you experience? Can qualia be explained in a materialistic way? Your guess is as good as mine.
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