Looking at Sound

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective is to determine which musical instrument has the purest tone through visual image analysis of the digitized sound waves. Methods/Materials I recorded ten different instrument's singular "A" note in an isolated environment using a Sony mini-disc sound recorder and dynamic microphone. Each instrument that I was able to tune was precisely tuned using a Korg Chromatic Tuner. To ensure the tonal value of each instrument's note, I played and recorded the "A" note at least three times. After this step I connected the recorder and computer through a stereo mini plug cable, and used the software Sound Forge to capture and digitize each instrument's sound wave. Selecting a waveform for each instrument based on quality, accuracy, and consistency, I was able to determine and classify the purity of each instruments tone through my extensive research on sound. Results Through visual representations of digital sound waves, I discovered variation in tonal purity and harmonics. Of the musical instruments I tested, only the piano and song flute/recorder had periodic (pure) wave forms. The other eight remaining instruments, including a violin, mandolin, saxophone, banjo, guitar, harmonica, organ, and human voice, all had complex periodic tones. Due to a slight variation in the visual wave train of the song flute/recorder, the piano proved to have the most consistent, simple, and continuous waveform. Thus, the purest tone was from a piano. Conclusions/Discussion In conclusion, my hypothesis that the piano has the purest tone, was correct. I initially thought the piano would have the purest tone because a piano doesn't have variations in playing a simple note. Other instruments have bow contact, mouth shape, and finger control which can all affect the note being played.

Competition history

• CSEF 2006 Physics & Astronomy · Entry J1510

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Physics and Astronomy projects
• CSEF Physics and Astronomy projects
• Every CSEF 2006 project