***** Subharmonic singing is kinda like vocal fry, but the fry is a different thing. Subharmonic singing is when you get your vocal folds to vibrate at two different frequencies so when their wave intersects it creates a new wave that's an octave lower than the original pitch.
I'm not sure the exact science behind it, but if you search around for videos on subharmonic singing I'm sure there's others who can explain better than I can. But yeah, they vibrate at two separate frequencies, I'd imagine by doing what you said.
To clarify your initial statement: Subharmonic ORCHESTRAL music was thought to not exist. Subharmonic VOCAL music has been used for decades to hit super low notes (first, zero, and negative octaves).
@@Xenon1825 I've practised the growling technique, and with that I'm able to hit notes in the from A-1 to A1. I know that A-1 is less than 20hz but if you record it and play it at double speed, you can hear an A0. But for me it's really hard to sustain pitch from the lower half of the 0 octave and down
@@matthewdockray9745 I'd even say second and first. Tanya Tagaq is a woman who sings with this technique to get notes that low! czcams.com/video/dumvYzfuT0w/video.html
@@Xenon1825 Its possible. Its just insanely difficult. I have managed to hit a B-1 using the 3rd subharmonic. It was weak, unstable and took many tries to get it in the first place. There are people who can get to the 3rd subharmonic more reliably like David Larsson, but i highly doubt there will ever be someone who sings that low using that technique in a live performance. Especially as a profundo/oktavist in an opera/choir. The lowest i could realistically see subharmonics find an use in unamplified performances is the upper 0th octave range. Maybe G0 at best.
Hi Adam. The phenomenon you're describing, is basically what happens when you play your five string bass on a rig that can't reproduce notes below, say, 50 Hz but the low B still sounds deep and full.
Holy fucking shit this blew my mind when you did the overtones in the computer program. By the way, you say it's supposed to be quiet but to me it's extremely loud.
Nice video. One thing, when he says that this lower frequency just exist in our head and not in the frequency analyser, if you record the sound from your speakers with a mic and analyse it, you will have the lower note appearing. It happens physically as it is mentioned before in the video !
The reason you can reconstruct the fundamental in your head from only harmonics is that the interval between the harmonics is fixed and natural. Almost like if you see a projectile flying at a certain speed in a certain direction, you could infer where it was launched from from looking at its arc. This subharmonic series doesn't seem to be like that. It seems like in the case of the bow technique and the tuning fork on the paper, a lower frequency is being produced but it doesn't have a natural relationship to the fundamental; it's just a lower, arbitrary frequency being produced by unusual means. Like you said, the paper on the fork is just a way of dividing the frequency, but it's not a natural attribute of the sound. You can divide a frequency in half by just singing an octave lower, that doesn't give the lower note any special relationship to the higher one just because of the way it was produced.
I've heard the ALF efect called a Tartini tone (wikipedia: combination tone). You can sort of hear it when you play power chords, or on a woodwind if you growl the third or the fifth above the note you're fingering.
I recommend checking out David Larson. He has a whole series of videos that explain how the subharmonic technique can be utilized with the human voice in the style of the Russian oktavists. It's amazing.
"Thanks for sticking around until the end of the video! This is where you can listen to the background music at full volume!" *Proceeds to talk over the background music for the remainder of the video* I love you Adam
the color blind analogy is perfect. Watch videos on how we see yellow, on an rgb tv screen. Two waves combine, and where they meet, you get a phantom third wave.
That little piece "Hey man" at 0:26 was so amazing that i had to repeat it 20 times and it was still in my head to the rest of the day. Adam, it is a genius thing to compose such catchy thing with just 5 secs!!!!
when i was in my senior year of high school, the end of our physics class was the sound and light unit. i will always remember the exercise where everyone in the class got to hear pitches all the way from the lowest humans can hear to the highest, and i was the only one in the class who couldn't stop their muscles from clenching and body from wiggling. when i listened to all the high pitched overtones, i very much physically felt the low buzz of the C. magic does exist, and it's in the way we can listen to music with our bodies :)
Ok, I've figured out the perfect metaphor. Remember when you first learned to drive stick? You'd dump the clutch and the car would do that jerky thing and then die? No matter what, you can't reproduce that. You'll either drive fine or kill the engine, no middle ground. She figured out the middle ground...
I couldn't hear the fundamental when you played all of the undertones.... WHAT DOES THIS MEAN!?!?!?! Am I a broken human being? *throws himself from balcony*
I recently did a little experiment with some of my singer friends similar to yours with only the upper overtones. I started our lowest Bass on around a D or E, somewhere around there, and had the next person sing the octave above him, then the next would sing another 5th up, then a 4th, so on so forth with 10 notes of the overtone scale. After that I told the bass singer to stop singing his note, but the note he was holding did not stop. I actually thought he had missed my cue to cut off because the note was SO loud, but sure enough he backed away from the group and the tone was still there. It's absolutely mind-blowing to hear it happen in person.
By the way most people do in fact 'hear' the fundamental from just the overtone information. Many of us have been doing it for years. Every time we listen to a radio with little 4 inch woofers. We can quite clearly tell that an electric bass' low E is not the 2nd E. Even though the E on a bass is 42 Hz. and there is no 4 inch speaker that can duplicate this fundamental. Interestingly many world class audio mixing engineers (like Bob Clearmountain) mix on tiny (and sometimes cheap) near-field monitors that cannot reproduce lows but mimic playback systems in the real world. Great job Adam. I just found this channel and am an instant fan!!
Last year, I went to an acapella festival in which one of the teachers taught me how to use subharmonics with my voice. After three months, it worked. I am now able to hit notes up to two octaves lower than the fundamental frequency. I don't normally use it (because it can hurt my voice apparently), but it did benefit my group when I used it.
Dear Adam and friends...This low note is called the difference tone. you can find difference tones just by finding the difference between two harmonics, for example: let's take the 2nd and 3rd harmonics of fundamental C (c and g). 3 minus 2 makes 1, so you should be able to hear the 1, the fundamental (C).. Try it with different harmonics, say 10th and 7th (E and Bb).. you should get the result 3, thus hearing the 3rd harmonic which is the 5th degree of C (G), which is pretty cool because you get something like a C7 chord, just by two sonic sources! ( G difference tone, E, Bb, and you can associate all of them with C because these notes come from it's haronic scale) You just have two be REEEAALLY exact with your JUST (not equal) tuning, otherwise it's not going to work. One can get really deep with that one, imagine having difference tones made of other difference tones... Also this is even possible to achieve with the human voice! (yes, for one person to sing 3 notes at once) If one has the abiity to throat sing (harmonic note singing technic mostly practiced in Mongolia) they can create a difference tone from the fundamental they sing, the harmonic they produce and the difference tone these two create. I have benn able to do this but it is really hard to always achieve because of the unstable nature of the human voice in terms of just tuning... just some info i've been into the last years!
The tuning fork on paper reminds me of Cymatics, a phenomenon where, after a vibration is generated, different patterns of interference are (visibly) symmetrical on the flat plane. My hypothesis here is that the interference is based on the prong position and the bend in the paper, where the prong is vibrating fundamentally in 2+ tiny points of contact, resulting in a phase cancellation in an 1/2 octave series. The ‘undertone series’ you mention here could also be just that single 1/2 undertone with it’s own overtones being produced again, which is why you can hear it so well.
I saw this video a few days ago, and it caught my attention. I was really interested. Now, earlier today, I was noodling around on my guitar at my desk and I found a way to recreate the "octave-below" sound on a guitar! I was playing and I noticed it sounded like it was filling up my ears a lot more than normal, but only sometimes, so I held really still and saw that the bottom of the guitar was gently touching my desk, and it sounded an octave lower when I played a string! I think the frequencies from the guitar strings resonate through the body of the guitar against the wood of the desk, and it adds an extra octave below your playing!
Very cool Adam, nice one. There was one article in Bass Player magazine, over a decade ago, where an orchestral double bassist gave a brief description of his 'subharmonic' technique which also relied on the bow grazing the string in very particular locations. The only other reference to this subject I've come across other than yours. Maybe this will ring a bell for somebody else who may know who the cat's name was. Thanks again, keep it coming.
I'm a little bit disappointed that you didn't mentioned about octavists/basso profondo etc. but still, great video, I'm glad that I found your channel.
This is why I have the DBX 120A Subharmonic Synth hooked up to my Cerwin Vega Subwoofers. As long as there are under tones in the program, you receive these subsonic frequencies. It's awesome and it's what audio engineers use in movie theaters...
I've been doing this on guitar for years. This lets you play notes *below* the lowest string. In drop-D tuning, a whole step down (a C) is heard if you play 5 & 3 on the D and A strings (the 5th and 8th of the C you hear). So there's an easier way of showing this than the tuning fork/paper method.
Really fascinating videos! Note for bass guitarists, if you pluck directly above the fret which is an octave up (on the same string) from any note you are fretting with the left hand you introduce a nice sub octave to your sound. Try it
Hmm... I play the viola and this is something I've noticed, though I haven't really messed around with it. Now I have a reason to do so! Thank you! Also, Mari Kimura seems to be able to control what tone comes from her "subharmonic bowing" technique. This makes me think that the outcome tone isn't random at all, as it can be reliably created, but that we simply lack the scientific know-how to adequately explain the phenomenon. If anyone happens to read this comment, I'd love to hear any other ideas on this.
It's gotta be that 1 on the G string she's got. Maybe something about multiples? Or maybe she just played around with it enough to get a feel for what sound it makes. Maybe that's what playing an instrument even is. But yeah, i did notice that he said random but she predicted what note she would play.
This reminds me of subharmonic singing. When you talk about the frequency being produced between the proper way to bow a violin and the raucous motion, that's similar to subharmonic vocals. The undertone (usually an octave below because singers want low notes) happens when you mix normal chest voice with fry vocals. It's somewhere in that sweet spot and I've only been able to achieve it a few times. Interesting stuff.
Hey, there is the effect of two sine waves added together. You also get the sum and the difference of the two frequencies. If you the those tones that you used to recreate the fundamental C, you'll find that there will be a subtractive combination that gives you the fundamental. but much lower in volume as it us a byproduct of the raw tones.....if that makes sense for example. If I were to mix a 200Hz and 300Hz done wave together, I would get a 500Hz resonance being the sum of the two tones, and a 100Hz resonance being the difference of the two. That's how most transistor radios work !
I think you're confusing the addition/mixing of waves with Amplitude Modulation- sum and difference sidebands arise from multiplying signals (AM), not from adding them together.
The phasing effect you hear is basically like AM but the other way around: When multiplying two sine waves, you get two new waves, the sum and the difference. So if you add two sine waves with only a small difference in frequency, it will sound the same as a sine wave between those two (actually the frequency is the arithmetic mean), whose amplitude has been modulated by a low frequency sine (actually the difference between the two sine waves).
Hey Adam, love your video! I wrote a paper on this very topic a few years ago which covers most of the same things you did. After some practice I was able to play these ALFVs on my viola and made some recordings to analyze. A quick frequency analysis showed that the ALFV really does produce a pitch which is infact lower than the strings fundamental. The raucous motion on it's own is a pitchless percussive sound but if controlled to have a periodicity it can produce a pitch. You can easily synthesize this by recording a short clip of the raucous motion and repeating it over and over again at different frequencies to hear different pitches. A violinist can vary the bow speed, pressure and contact point to find the 'sweet spot' to achieve that controlled periodicity of raucous motion and create a subharmonic frequency.
As I was listening to the demonstration of the tuning fork applied to paper, I thought, that kind of sounds like when I get a filling at the Dentist. The sound of the of the drill, the grinding sound of your tooth, and the vibration of your jaw into your skull, all working together in harmony. I'm not certain that this is the same phenomena of sub harmonies, but added a thought of beauty to an otherwise agonizing experience.
Your analogy of being able to lower your speaking voice an octave is actually true - bass singers use the subharmonic technique in singing to reach super low notes, I can do it too
This reminds me so much of that kind of style of Tibetan Singing called Throat Singing, or Khargyraa, or Khaargyra (not sure which), where one takes a journey through the painful experience (I'm exaggerating a little) of turning a cough, or the clearing of one's throat, into a consistent note that can be played. They also have a type of singing for the overtone series, and it actually allows you to be able to sing two notes at once. Love these videos, and I applaud your memes with great awe. Bass!
Hi Adam. I’ve actually solved the problem of the (so-called) “missing” fundamental. It’s not an auditory illusion but the frequency of the complex (combined) wave. Now, for pure harmonics, the explanation is easy enough. The undertone is just the greatest common divisor. C#550Hz with E660Hz produces A110Hz. Easy enough! But what happens when we take, say, C#551Hz? The GCD jumps down to 1Hz! It’s too complicated to explain here but my model predicts a fundamental of A110.0909...Hz. I’ve tested the theory under proper conditions at university and they all confirm it. It’s a physical phenomenon. No more dependent on psychological effects than our perception of any other frequency in general.
Fascinating as always. I feel good about my self that I could hear the implied fundamental. I should probably find a better basis for my self esteem...
Thanks for this video. I personally had so many arguments with ny professor about this, and him saying I was either hallucinating and lying. Can't wait to show him that.
Fun fact: tubas have an subharmonic in the 5th below the key of tuba. For example, CC tubas have a C as open note with C1 as fundamental and C2 as 2nd harmonic and under those two you have a strongly resonance at F0 and F1. It is about 2cents flat but it is the lips that you use to make it intune.
Check out the Russian "strohbass" technique, where people are able to sing an octave below their fundamental pitch by simultaneously vibrating the false vocal chords a 4th down from the fundamental. Our brains then fill in the lower octave, as you described in your video.
this phenomenon is something I've actually pondered at length without doing any outside reading on the subject. so of course I didn't know that it is referred to as Anomalous Low Frequency Vibration. But here are some additional thoughts: because of Helmholtz motion, instead of a single excitation, the bow's action is a series of micro excitations, and as such they comprise a carrier frequency. that carrier frequency is optimally one that matches or supports the fundamental's resonance, but like a ring modulator, if you modulate the carrier, you modulate the mathematical result of the interference between the fingered note and the bow excitation. probably doesn't explain everything, but certainly describes the circumstances.
actually you can do something very similar to the tuning fork-on-paper thing w/ stringed instrument, you just need to pluck the string on the fret an octave higher than the one you are actually pressing down, this produces a OC-2 kind of effect
Pipe organs do the whole overtones thing to get 32' and 64' pitches all the time. You have a stop sounding at 16' or 32' pitch, then add a perfect fifth above, either 10-2/3' or 21-1/3' and you get yourself a bit more bass. Some organs just have the quint without the foundation so that you can combine it with whichever pedal stop you do desire, but they serve the same purpose. What's really interesting though is that these are caused by the sound waves repeatedly reinforcing and cancelling out each other, producing a tone that is half the pitch of the lower sounding rank.
Can we not drop our voice by an octave by vibrating each vocal chord at a different rate? Subvocalisation is an old technique used to sing obscenely low notes. It takes some practice but is not terrible difficult.
Cate Frazier-Neely Yes, basically. The article does mix up subvocalization and simply using the vestibular folds, though. One can use the vestibular folds to produce a static pitch by slightly tensing them and applying air pressure, without engaging the true vocal folds. These aren't undertones as the natural pitch (1st harmonic) of the vestibular folds is quite low, often more than an octave below the lowest comfortable pitch of the true folds.
Warning about this article: What Alexander Glenfield sings is not technically subharmonics. He is known for his amazing abilities in singing Kargyraa and Khomeini (two different styles of throat singing). While these do use undertones and controlled fry, they are not the same as subharmonic singing as they don't combine the tones. Instead, these methods aim to separate them in order to hit disharmonic and harmonic chords, and they also sound a lot more glottal than subharmonic singing.
That subharmonic generation appears to just be a kind of undersampling of a signal. This under sampling causes the resultant sampled signal to be aliased. According to the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem, the sampling frequency needs to be at least twice the frequency of the signal being sampled to achieve a signal without frequency aliasing, though the reconstructed signal will lack a lot of detail unless the sample rate is increased. Basically, what I'm saying is that subharmonics don't exist like overtones do. They are sort of the absence of information, caused by insufficient data collection. Sort of like how darkness is the absence of light, dry is the absence of wet, and cold is the absence of heat. Calling them subharmonics is a useful way of talking about them though. Oh, when I say insufficient data collection, I mean we aren't transfering all of the oscillations to the paper, like Adam demonstrated. When you put the base end of the tuning fork on a block of wood, you get a complete transfer of those vibrations.
Also, you can make alot of "ALFV" with electronic instruments. Just generate something below hearing threshold with enough volume/energy and with such a colourful timbre (plenty overtones) and there you have it. Producing the undertones, though, that's basically impossible from a strict pov, as they literally do not exist materially, only theoretically.
Lydian dominant (tonally neutral; neither subdominant nor dominant - A B C# D# E F# G A) = acoustic scale. Formed from selecting notes going upward from the fundamental by overtone (A A E A C# E G A B C# D# E [E#] F# G [G#] A). A composite neutral of Mixolydian and Lydian, it can also be thought of as a parallel to Ionian, which is also neutral to those modes and which is uniquely *tonic* in quality rather than subdominant or dominant. Its parent scale, melodic minor, can be formed from the same notes. A major scale itself also heavily mirrors this acoustic series, as does it when altered into having a flattened sixth (minor plagal leading tone) degree. Essentially the musical quality of the overtone series is bright, innocent, unmarred, extroverted. Lydian dominant is the scale closest mirroring the lowest partials of the overtone series. Aeolian dominant (modally neutral; androgynous between major and minor - A G F (E) D C# B A) = subacoustic scale. Formed from selecting notes going downward from the fundamental by undertone (A A D A F D B A G F [Eb] D C B [Bb] A), and adding a perfect fifth for harmonic cohesion. A composite of Mixolydian and Aeolian, it can also be thought of as a tonal parallel to Dorian, built around minor plagal cadences while still remaining modally androgynous like Dorian. While Lydian dominant is ambiguous in its function of having no leading tone to its tonic chord, Aeolian dominant is androgynous in its modality by being perfectly balanced between its number of major intervals (three including the fifth) and minor intervals (three including the fourth) from the tonic. Dorian has this quality as a modal neutral to the Ionian ("natural") modal system, with three and three of major & minor intervals as well. Alteration of Aeolian dominant to have a Phrygian leading tone or a leading tone to the fifth of the mode is also accommodated by the subacoustic or undertone series. Essentially the musical quality of the undertone series is dark, perturbed, ominous, pensive. Like Dorian, Aeolian dominant is a *symmetric* scale (same set of whole & half steps up as down), and is the scale closest mirroring the most immediate integrals of the undertone series.
around 3:43 when you show the spectrum analyzer and PROVE what you're talking about I think it gives weight to the idea and by making this video you are helping me support my claims with some sort of evidence when I try to educate those who seek ideas from me. I talk about subharmonics from time to time and although few know what I'm talking about, even fewer than that believe me. So maybe this will help. Thank you
You can actually do this with your voice! There are multiple ways of doing it too. The most popular ones being Kargyraa or Throat Singing and Subharmonic Singing. Throat Singing where the vocal folds and ventricular folds are being vibrated at the same time, creating the pitch that's an entire octave lower. Subharmonic singing relies solely on the vocal cords, where each flap is believed to vibrate at two different frequencies, essentially being an organized or "tamed" vocal fry. Both techniques have been used for a long time like in traditional Tuvan Throat Singing and Oktavism, but nowadays they even have more "modern" applications in music, notably beatboxing and acapella music.
The mechanical system includes the bow and the string and therefore when the correct pressure is applied the player has access to the overtone and undertones of a virtual unit which includes their combined mass as well as the mass of the arm weight applied by the player therefore in considering the range of frequencies possible one must explore the various harmonic modes of that combined system and not restrict themselves to considerations based solely on string length, seems fairly straight forward to me.
I literally just discovered this by accident when playing my cello today. My thought is that not only does the string vibrate, but the bow hair can also vibrate. The low tone being heard when the right combination of bow and string resonance occurs. This is facilitated by both bow pressure and speed. (And probably several other variables I'm not aware of, such as how sticky the rosin is etc.)
There's a bassoonist youtuber called Richard Bobo. On one of his latest videos he performed an Ab0 on contrabassoon, a whole tone below the lowest note possible on contrabassoon. What he did is play a multiphonic of notes form the harmonic series of Ab, "generating" an Ab. That's basically what's going on at the end of the video.
I watched this video as a break between studying for finals and I just have to say that this is an amazing video. You really explained the concept and theory surrounding it in depth within a short amount of time, and now I'm really interested to see if I can use it somehow. Anyway, I love your videos and am always excited for learning about some new musical concept. Keep up the good work!
I could hear that "ghost" fundamental C with headphones on! It's the same volume as the rest, but those upper pitches form a cluster that is so strident and overpowering. Fascinating. Thank you!
From what I understand, they use the phenomenon of hearing the fundamental from the harmonics to allow low frequencies to be perceived when smaller speakers that are less capable of projecting them are used. This kind of happens in the opposite direction though, where they use a harmonic exciter to amplify the overtones of the low frequencies. And that is how we hear a 30 Hz frequency out of little tiny speakers. But I also might be wrong, since I never really researched this on my own, so there's that.
Well funny thing is in certain Asian regions a multiple-century-old singing style known as Kargyraa allows you to produce undertones (I've only gone down to the 3rd subharmonic yet).
You CAN use this subharmonics technique on your voice. Its very interesting, and it does produce a sound exactly one octave lower than the pitch you are actually singing (or speaking). If you know what vocal fry is, you can do this! Simply sing a note that is comfortably in your "low-ish" range, with your chest voice, or your normal singing voice. Then, gradually apply vocal fry, VERY VERY slowly. Keep starting with your chest voice and add vocal fry until the note becomes solidly vocal fry. At some point in this slow transition, your voice hit this subharmonic, but it was likely too fast to hear and just sounded like a "hiccup" of sorts. The technique is all about honing in on that small window of subharmonic resonance. Very fascinating!
one of the common example is the telephone. Our voice is transmitted in a bandwidth from 300Hz to 3kHz. But our real voice is way lower than 300 Hz. It's transmitted, in fact the upper harmonics content. Our brain is rebuilding what's downward.
You might find this interesting--in my senior year of college I prepared a piano with a speaker, a paper clip probe and a set of 9V batteries. I found that if I held the paper clip just right, the fuzzbox-ish sparks that came from the speaker were sometimes an octave or an octave and a fourth lower than the actual note. Same principle I'm sure
Speaking of missing fundamentals, even though the first partial might be missing, the periodicity of the complex signal equals that missing frequency, also called Residuum. Some pipe organs use that effect to generate sub bass without the need for huge pipes, e.g. a 16' + 10 2/3' registers to create the effect of a 32' register which would require a lot more space and air. Great video on a fascinating topic, go Adam!!
If you play the 2nd and 3rd harmonic, the sine waves add up to a function that repeats at the fundamental frequency. sin(2x)+sin(3x) repeats at the same frequency as sin(x).
Bro, I can't perform even the most basic musical feat. I listen to bands like Skinny Puppy and Ministry, but I always appreciate your videos. You explain, what seems like complex information, in a way that even I can follow. Keep it up!
As a trombone player, I've always been curious about things like this. For trombones, the fundamental note is "pedal Bb" so the 1st harmonic is Bb an octave higher. However, there is a way to place a sort of "half harmonic" where the note in first position is F. This is more than just lipping the note down as well, it's essentially another partial trombones can play on and while it doesn't sound pretty, its useful when it's a straight trombone that doesn't have an attachment to access more notes in between the fundamental and the 1st harmonic. I'm not sure scientifically how this is possible and I've tried researching it to no avail.
Two pitches together will give you a true difference frequency - IN THE AIR. It's easy to demonstrate with a Hammond Organ's drawbars, played through a speaker. Not only can you hear the new lower note, you can see it on a spectrum analyzer that's picking it up with a microphone.
Fun fact, you can actually lower your voice an octave in singing using a technique called, well, subharmonic singing.
where does vocal fry fit in to this? or is this more akin to Tuvan throat singing?
*****
Subharmonic singing is kinda like vocal fry, but the fry is a different thing. Subharmonic singing is when you get your vocal folds to vibrate at two different frequencies so when their wave intersects it creates a new wave that's an octave lower than the original pitch.
***** Wait, so the left fold vibrates at a different frequency from the right fold? Is this done by separately controlling the tension of each flap?
I'm not sure the exact science behind it, but if you search around for videos on subharmonic singing I'm sure there's others who can explain better than I can. But yeah, they vibrate at two separate frequencies, I'd imagine by doing what you said.
I'm going to be a mannnn
I really do appreciate that tab in 4:27
but wait which string? it doesn't specify? HELP!
Your videos are like the Vsauce of the music world.
these are more practical though.
Vsauce actually did a music-related video: "Will we ever run out of new music?"
his example space included every permutation of white noise for a particular length of time. Not sure I'd use that to quantify music
He used it just as a parameter to calculate.
Except they stay on topic ;)
To clarify your initial statement: Subharmonic ORCHESTRAL music was thought to not exist. Subharmonic VOCAL music has been used for decades to hit super low notes (first, zero, and negative octaves).
I've never seen subharmonics to be used to hit negative octaves, that's only fry as I've heard.
Subharmonic singing only really lies in the first octave. Not really any point “singing” notes in the 0 octave
@@Xenon1825 I've practised the growling technique, and with that I'm able to hit notes in the from A-1 to A1. I know that A-1 is less than 20hz but if you record it and play it at double speed, you can hear an A0. But for me it's really hard to sustain pitch from the lower half of the 0 octave and down
@@matthewdockray9745 I'd even say second and first. Tanya Tagaq is a woman who sings with this technique to get notes that low! czcams.com/video/dumvYzfuT0w/video.html
@@Xenon1825 Its possible. Its just insanely difficult. I have managed to hit a B-1 using the 3rd subharmonic. It was weak, unstable and took many tries to get it in the first place. There are people who can get to the 3rd subharmonic more reliably like David Larsson, but i highly doubt there will ever be someone who sings that low using that technique in a live performance. Especially as a profundo/oktavist in an opera/choir. The lowest i could realistically see subharmonics find an use in unamplified performances is the upper 0th octave range. Maybe G0 at best.
Thank you for the guitar tab, I would've been lost!
dun worry, you'll get used to it in a couple of hours of practicing, keep going man !
Nailed it
That cracked me up
i was just about to make the same comment!! i guess there truly are no original thoughts lol
Damn I remember if 5th grade playing hard and getting "cool sounds" on my violin... did I accidently find undertones? ?
Hi Adam. The phenomenon you're describing, is basically what happens when you play your five string bass on a rig that can't reproduce notes below, say, 50 Hz but the low B still sounds deep and full.
I subscribed as a bassist, but in my day job I'm an acoustic engineer and these videos are... resonating with me on so many levels :D
Jack Traveller haaaaaa I see what you did there
Well said
I want a full version of "Hey man, you gotta check out some of this stuff!".
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yes please!
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Holy fucking shit this blew my mind when you did the overtones in the computer program. By the way, you say it's supposed to be quiet but to me it's extremely loud.
Incredibly loud for me as well, even at low volumes. Insane phenomenon though.. Blew my mind as well
Swoleham Same thing here. It was really loud for me.
We're the next step in human evolution haha
same here, but i know nothing of music..
>tfw the fundamental isn't super loud for you but you aren't supposed to be a musical normie
Nice video.
One thing, when he says that this lower frequency just exist in our head and not in the frequency analyser, if you record the sound from your speakers with a mic and analyse it, you will have the lower note appearing. It happens physically as it is mentioned before in the video !
The reason you can reconstruct the fundamental in your head from only harmonics is that the interval between the harmonics is fixed and natural. Almost like if you see a projectile flying at a certain speed in a certain direction, you could infer where it was launched from from looking at its arc.
This subharmonic series doesn't seem to be like that. It seems like in the case of the bow technique and the tuning fork on the paper, a lower frequency is being produced but it doesn't have a natural relationship to the fundamental; it's just a lower, arbitrary frequency being produced by unusual means. Like you said, the paper on the fork is just a way of dividing the frequency, but it's not a natural attribute of the sound.
You can divide a frequency in half by just singing an octave lower, that doesn't give the lower note any special relationship to the higher one just because of the way it was produced.
I've heard the ALF efect called a Tartini tone (wikipedia: combination tone). You can sort of hear it when you play power chords, or on a woodwind if you growl the third or the fifth above the note you're fingering.
Yeah he has a video on that now. It's pretty good.
Its time to make some Mysterious Kabbalistic Low Frequency Spectral Enigmatic Neo-post Ethereal Wave music
The Infinity Light agreed.
NY'ers have already done it. There were 5 people in the audience, two left before it really got cookin.
+Jeffrey Collins can you link it? I wanna see!
kabbalistic music? bah! hahahaha!
I recommend checking out David Larson. He has a whole series of videos that explain how the subharmonic technique can be utilized with the human voice in the style of the Russian oktavists. It's amazing.
"Thanks for sticking around until the end of the video! This is where you can listen to the background music at full volume!"
*Proceeds to talk over the background music for the remainder of the video*
I love you Adam
the color blind analogy is perfect. Watch videos on how we see yellow, on an rgb tv screen. Two waves combine, and where they meet, you get a phantom third wave.
THANK YOU for mentioning Harry Partch in this video!
subject matter necessitated it.
much respect.
That little piece "Hey man" at 0:26 was so amazing that i had to repeat it 20 times and it was still in my head to the rest of the day. Adam, it is a genius thing to compose such catchy thing with just 5 secs!!!!
tab: -0- killed me
I got really excited when Harry Partch was mentioned. His music is insane and he made some crazy instruments
Thank you Adam, this is the first time that I have heard of this ALF. This is fascinating!
if the violin is supposed to be playing an A @2:10 then the violinist should probs tune their violin lmao
It's meant to be A in baroque tuning. That's to say it's an Ab. It's not at 440Hz (nor is it at 432).
I'm sure it's supposed to be a 440hz A and he just missed it by a half step.
innit. my perfect pitch was quaking
@@Danmashinigamikuro no its somewhere in between I hear it too
yeah sounded flat to me. but pitches vary. i once had a violin teacher who swore by A415.
This is an awesome series. Basically vsauce for music
when i was in my senior year of high school, the end of our physics class was the sound and light unit. i will always remember the exercise where everyone in the class got to hear pitches all the way from the lowest humans can hear to the highest, and i was the only one in the class who couldn't stop their muscles from clenching and body from wiggling. when i listened to all the high pitched overtones, i very much physically felt the low buzz of the C. magic does exist, and it's in the way we can listen to music with our bodies :)
Ok, I've figured out the perfect metaphor. Remember when you first learned to drive stick? You'd dump the clutch and the car would do that jerky thing and then die? No matter what, you can't reproduce that. You'll either drive fine or kill the engine, no middle ground.
She figured out the middle ground...
I couldn't hear the fundamental when you played all of the undertones.... WHAT DOES THIS MEAN!?!?!?! Am I a broken human being? *throws himself from balcony*
Turn the volume way up, listen through headphones, and make sure you are in a quiet environment.
I did, loudly... my wife can, but I cannot, due to, according to her, her not being a broken human being... fml
I also cant hear it. When i turn volume up, i can hear rather phase shifting of overtons, and it's too unpleasant to try even louder.
me neither, I guess we are broken human beings! i cranked it up and everything... I guess we are soundfrequency deaf...
I am not hearing it too, even I'm using headphones and the volume is all up.
THIS NEEDS TO BE VIRAL
I recently did a little experiment with some of my singer friends similar to yours with only the upper overtones. I started our lowest Bass on around a D or E, somewhere around there, and had the next person sing the octave above him, then the next would sing another 5th up, then a 4th, so on so forth with 10 notes of the overtone scale. After that I told the bass singer to stop singing his note, but the note he was holding did not stop. I actually thought he had missed my cue to cut off because the note was SO loud, but sure enough he backed away from the group and the tone was still there. It's absolutely mind-blowing to hear it happen in person.
By the way most people do in fact 'hear' the fundamental from just the overtone information. Many of us have been doing it for years. Every time we listen to a radio with little 4 inch woofers. We can quite clearly tell that an electric bass' low E is not the 2nd E. Even though the E on a bass is 42 Hz. and there is no 4 inch speaker that can duplicate this fundamental. Interestingly many world class audio mixing engineers (like Bob Clearmountain) mix on tiny (and sometimes cheap) near-field monitors that cannot reproduce lows but mimic playback systems in the real world.
Great job Adam. I just found this channel and am an instant fan!!
Last year, I went to an acapella festival in which one of the teachers taught me how to use subharmonics with my voice. After three months, it worked. I am now able to hit notes up to two octaves lower than the fundamental frequency. I don't normally use it (because it can hurt my voice apparently), but it did benefit my group when I used it.
Dear Adam and friends...This low note is called the difference tone. you can find difference tones just by finding the difference between two harmonics, for example: let's take the 2nd and 3rd harmonics of fundamental C (c and g). 3 minus 2 makes 1, so you should be able to hear the 1, the fundamental (C).. Try it with different harmonics, say 10th and 7th (E and Bb).. you should get the result 3, thus hearing the 3rd harmonic which is the 5th degree of C (G), which is pretty cool because you get something like a C7 chord, just by two sonic sources! ( G difference tone, E, Bb, and you can associate all of them with C because these notes come from it's haronic scale)
You just have two be REEEAALLY exact with your JUST (not equal) tuning, otherwise it's not going to work.
One can get really deep with that one, imagine having difference tones made of other difference tones... Also this is even possible to achieve with the human voice! (yes, for one person to sing 3 notes at once) If one has the abiity to throat sing (harmonic note singing technic mostly practiced in Mongolia) they can create a difference tone from the fundamental they sing, the harmonic they produce and the difference tone these two create. I have benn able to do this but it is really hard to always achieve because of the unstable nature of the human voice in terms of just tuning... just some info i've been into the last years!
3:31 you said "peebs of paper" 😝
Lol, seriously though, awesome video. Well done.
The tuning fork on paper reminds me of Cymatics, a phenomenon where, after a vibration is generated, different patterns of interference are (visibly) symmetrical on the flat plane. My hypothesis here is that the interference is based on the prong position and the bend in the paper, where the prong is vibrating fundamentally in 2+ tiny points of contact, resulting in a phase cancellation in an 1/2 octave series. The ‘undertone series’ you mention here could also be just that single 1/2 undertone with it’s own overtones being produced again, which is why you can hear it so well.
David Larson is pretty good at this type of stuff, he does subharmonic singing all the time.
I saw this video a few days ago, and it caught my attention. I was really interested. Now, earlier today, I was noodling around on my guitar at my desk and I found a way to recreate the "octave-below" sound on a guitar! I was playing and I noticed it sounded like it was filling up my ears a lot more than normal, but only sometimes, so I held really still and saw that the bottom of the guitar was gently touching my desk, and it sounded an octave lower when I played a string! I think the frequencies from the guitar strings resonate through the body of the guitar against the wood of the desk, and it adds an extra octave below your playing!
Very cool Adam, nice one. There was one article in Bass Player magazine, over a decade ago, where an orchestral double bassist gave a brief description of his 'subharmonic' technique which also relied on the bow grazing the string in very particular locations. The only other reference to this subject I've come across other than yours. Maybe this will ring a bell for somebody else who may know who the cat's name was. Thanks again, keep it coming.
I've been singing subharmonics for years and never knew that Adam had made a video on this!
I'm a little bit disappointed that you didn't mentioned about octavists/basso profondo etc. but still, great video, I'm glad that I found your channel.
You can actually do this with your voice!
Try to hit a note and then almost fry your voice and you are gonna hear a note one octave lower.
Geoff castellucci has entered the chat
That's called subharmonic singing. Pretty sure it's not to be confused with throat singing. I could be wrong though.
This is why I have the DBX 120A Subharmonic Synth hooked up to my Cerwin Vega Subwoofers. As long as there are under tones in the program, you receive these subsonic frequencies. It's awesome and it's what audio engineers use in movie theaters...
I've been doing this on guitar for years. This lets you play notes *below* the lowest string. In drop-D tuning, a whole step down (a C) is heard if you play 5 & 3 on the D and A strings (the 5th and 8th of the C you hear). So there's an easier way of showing this than the tuning fork/paper method.
Really fascinating videos! Note for bass guitarists, if you pluck directly above the fret which is an octave up (on the same string) from any note you are fretting with the left hand you introduce a nice sub octave to your sound. Try it
Hmm... I play the viola and this is something I've noticed, though I haven't really messed around with it. Now I have a reason to do so! Thank you!
Also, Mari Kimura seems to be able to control what tone comes from her "subharmonic bowing" technique. This makes me think that the outcome tone isn't random at all, as it can be reliably created, but that we simply lack the scientific know-how to adequately explain the phenomenon. If anyone happens to read this comment, I'd love to hear any other ideas on this.
It's gotta be that 1 on the G string she's got. Maybe something about multiples? Or maybe she just played around with it enough to get a feel for what sound it makes. Maybe that's what playing an instrument even is. But yeah, i did notice that he said random but she predicted what note she would play.
This reminds me of subharmonic singing. When you talk about the frequency being produced between the proper way to bow a violin and the raucous motion, that's similar to subharmonic vocals. The undertone (usually an octave below because singers want low notes) happens when you mix normal chest voice with fry vocals. It's somewhere in that sweet spot and I've only been able to achieve it a few times. Interesting stuff.
The theme lick to "hey man, you gotta check out some of this stuff" was so cool. Thanks.
Hey, there is the effect of two sine waves added together. You also get the sum and the difference of the two frequencies. If you the those tones that you used to recreate the fundamental C, you'll find that there will be a subtractive combination that gives you the fundamental. but much lower in volume as it us a byproduct of the raw tones.....if that makes sense
for example. If I were to mix a 200Hz and 300Hz done wave together, I would get a 500Hz resonance being the sum of the two tones, and a 100Hz resonance being the difference of the two. That's how most transistor radios work !
I think you're confusing the addition/mixing of waves with Amplitude Modulation- sum and difference sidebands arise from multiplying signals (AM), not from adding them together.
Tristan Pantano, still applies. When you tune one sting to the other, you hear the difference in the notes as a low pulse
That pulse you speak of is phasing, which is also not the same as sum/difference sidebands from AM.
Chris Wilson Thank you for both sharing and being interested in this stuff, too!!!
The phasing effect you hear is basically like AM but the other way around: When multiplying two sine waves, you get two new waves, the sum and the difference. So if you add two sine waves with only a small difference in frequency, it will sound the same as a sine wave between those two (actually the frequency is the arithmetic mean), whose amplitude has been modulated by a low frequency sine (actually the difference between the two sine waves).
A good way to hear the "implied fundamental" stuff is to simply highpass a complex waveform such as a saw wave or even a guitar or violin recording
0:07 That felt like dental drill to my ear. Don't do that ever again.
Hey Adam, love your video! I wrote a paper on this very topic a few years ago which covers most of the same things you did. After some practice I was able to play these ALFVs on my viola and made some recordings to analyze. A quick frequency analysis showed that the ALFV really does produce a pitch which is infact lower than the strings fundamental. The raucous motion on it's own is a pitchless percussive sound but if controlled to have a periodicity it can produce a pitch. You can easily synthesize this by recording a short clip of the raucous motion and repeating it over and over again at different frequencies to hear different pitches. A violinist can vary the bow speed, pressure and contact point to find the 'sweet spot' to achieve that controlled periodicity of raucous motion and create a subharmonic frequency.
*Instantly grabs a tuning fork
As I was listening to the demonstration of the tuning fork applied to paper, I thought, that kind of sounds like when I get a filling at the Dentist. The sound of the of the drill, the grinding sound of your tooth, and the vibration of your jaw into your skull, all working together in harmony. I'm not certain that this is the same phenomena of sub harmonies, but added a thought of beauty to an otherwise agonizing experience.
Your analogy of being able to lower your speaking voice an octave is actually true - bass singers use the subharmonic technique in singing to reach super low notes, I can do it too
dat tab tho
suggested read: "multiphonics on the double bass" by Hakon Thelin. great video, thank you and keep up the good work
This reminds me so much of that kind of style of Tibetan Singing called Throat Singing, or Khargyraa, or Khaargyra (not sure which), where one takes a journey through the painful experience (I'm exaggerating a little) of turning a cough, or the clearing of one's throat, into a consistent note that can be played. They also have a type of singing for the overtone series, and it actually allows you to be able to sing two notes at once. Love these videos, and I applaud your memes with great awe. Bass!
Well either way it still refers to harmonic undertones, as that's what I was getting at, but thanks for the info anyway.
Just discovered this AWESOME channel. Thank you!
Hi Adam. I’ve actually solved the problem of the (so-called) “missing” fundamental. It’s not an auditory illusion but the frequency of the complex (combined) wave. Now, for pure harmonics, the explanation is easy enough. The undertone is just the greatest common divisor. C#550Hz with E660Hz produces A110Hz. Easy enough! But what happens when we take, say, C#551Hz? The GCD jumps down to 1Hz!
It’s too complicated to explain here but my model predicts a fundamental of A110.0909...Hz. I’ve tested the theory under proper conditions at university and they all confirm it. It’s a physical phenomenon. No more dependent on psychological effects than our perception of any other frequency in general.
Best explanation I have heard so far about 'implied fundamental tones'. I intend to watch all your videos.
Fascinating as always. I feel good about my self that I could hear the implied fundamental. I should probably find a better basis for my self esteem...
Thanks for this video. I personally had so many arguments with ny professor about this, and him saying I was either hallucinating and lying. Can't wait to show him that.
Fun fact: tubas have an subharmonic in the 5th below the key of tuba. For example, CC tubas have a C as open note with C1 as fundamental and C2 as 2nd harmonic and under those two you have a strongly resonance at F0 and F1. It is about 2cents flat but it is the lips that you use to make it intune.
Check out the Russian "strohbass" technique, where people are able to sing an octave below their fundamental pitch by simultaneously vibrating the false vocal chords a 4th down from the fundamental. Our brains then fill in the lower octave, as you described in your video.
this phenomenon is something I've actually pondered at length without doing any outside reading on the subject. so of course I didn't know that it is referred to as Anomalous Low Frequency Vibration. But here are some additional thoughts: because of Helmholtz motion, instead of a single excitation, the bow's action is a series of micro excitations, and as such they comprise a carrier frequency. that carrier frequency is optimally one that matches or supports the fundamental's resonance, but like a ring modulator, if you modulate the carrier, you modulate the mathematical result of the interference between the fingered note and the bow excitation.
probably doesn't explain everything, but certainly describes the circumstances.
actually you can do something very similar to the tuning fork-on-paper thing w/ stringed instrument, you just need to pluck the string on the fret an octave higher than the one you are actually pressing down, this produces a OC-2 kind of effect
I think it just sounds like someone put a sine wave on top of the note.
Pipe organs do the whole overtones thing to get 32' and 64' pitches all the time. You have a stop sounding at 16' or 32' pitch, then add a perfect fifth above, either 10-2/3' or 21-1/3' and you get yourself a bit more bass. Some organs just have the quint without the foundation so that you can combine it with whichever pedal stop you do desire, but they serve the same purpose. What's really interesting though is that these are caused by the sound waves repeatedly reinforcing and cancelling out each other, producing a tone that is half the pitch of the lower sounding rank.
Can we not drop our voice by an octave by vibrating each vocal chord at a different rate? Subvocalisation is an old technique used to sing obscenely low notes. It takes some practice but is not terrible difficult.
alexanderglenfield.blogspot.com/2010/09/singing-undertones-subharmonics-and.html
Cate Frazier-Neely Yes, basically. The article does mix up subvocalization and simply using the vestibular folds, though. One can use the vestibular folds to produce a static pitch by slightly tensing them and applying air pressure, without engaging the true vocal folds. These aren't undertones as the natural pitch (1st harmonic) of the vestibular folds is quite low, often more than an octave below the lowest comfortable pitch of the true folds.
Warning about this article: What Alexander Glenfield sings is not technically subharmonics. He is known for his amazing abilities in singing Kargyraa and Khomeini (two different styles of throat singing). While these do use undertones and controlled fry, they are not the same as subharmonic singing as they don't combine the tones. Instead, these methods aim to separate them in order to hit disharmonic and harmonic chords, and they also sound a lot more glottal than subharmonic singing.
Uh, subvocalization is when you talk to yourself while you read, also called "silent speech."
Overtone singing is actually a thing
That subharmonic generation appears to just be a kind of undersampling of a signal. This under sampling causes the resultant sampled signal to be aliased. According to the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem, the sampling frequency needs to be at least twice the frequency of the signal being sampled to achieve a signal without frequency aliasing, though the reconstructed signal will lack a lot of detail unless the sample rate is increased.
Basically, what I'm saying is that subharmonics don't exist like overtones do. They are sort of the absence of information, caused by insufficient data collection. Sort of like how darkness is the absence of light, dry is the absence of wet, and cold is the absence of heat.
Calling them subharmonics is a useful way of talking about them though.
Oh, when I say insufficient data collection, I mean we aren't transfering all of the oscillations to the paper, like Adam demonstrated. When you put the base end of the tuning fork on a block of wood, you get a complete transfer of those vibrations.
Also, you can make alot of "ALFV" with electronic instruments. Just generate something below hearing threshold with enough volume/energy and with such a colourful timbre (plenty overtones) and there you have it. Producing the undertones, though, that's basically impossible from a strict pov, as they literally do not exist materially, only theoretically.
I heard the C loud and clear when you played the overtones, even without headphones. Interesting!
Lydian dominant (tonally neutral; neither subdominant nor dominant - A B C# D# E F# G A) = acoustic scale. Formed from selecting notes going upward from the fundamental by overtone (A A E A C# E G A B C# D# E [E#] F# G [G#] A). A composite neutral of Mixolydian and Lydian, it can also be thought of as a parallel to Ionian, which is also neutral to those modes and which is uniquely *tonic* in quality rather than subdominant or dominant. Its parent scale, melodic minor, can be formed from the same notes. A major scale itself also heavily mirrors this acoustic series, as does it when altered into having a flattened sixth (minor plagal leading tone) degree. Essentially the musical quality of the overtone series is bright, innocent, unmarred, extroverted. Lydian dominant is the scale closest mirroring the lowest partials of the overtone series.
Aeolian dominant (modally neutral; androgynous between major and minor - A G F (E) D C# B A) = subacoustic scale. Formed from selecting notes going downward from the fundamental by undertone (A A D A F D B A G F [Eb] D C B [Bb] A), and adding a perfect fifth for harmonic cohesion. A composite of Mixolydian and Aeolian, it can also be thought of as a tonal parallel to Dorian, built around minor plagal cadences while still remaining modally androgynous like Dorian. While Lydian dominant is ambiguous in its function of having no leading tone to its tonic chord, Aeolian dominant is androgynous in its modality by being perfectly balanced between its number of major intervals (three including the fifth) and minor intervals (three including the fourth) from the tonic. Dorian has this quality as a modal neutral to the Ionian ("natural") modal system, with three and three of major & minor intervals as well. Alteration of Aeolian dominant to have a Phrygian leading tone or a leading tone to the fifth of the mode is also accommodated by the subacoustic or undertone series. Essentially the musical quality of the undertone series is dark, perturbed, ominous, pensive. Like Dorian, Aeolian dominant is a *symmetric* scale (same set of whole & half steps up as down), and is the scale closest mirroring the most immediate integrals of the undertone series.
around 3:43 when you show the spectrum analyzer and PROVE what you're talking about I think it gives weight to the idea and by making this video you are helping me support my claims with some sort of evidence when I try to educate those who seek ideas from me. I talk about subharmonics from time to time and although few know what I'm talking about, even fewer than that believe me. So maybe this will help. Thank you
You can actually do this with your voice! There are multiple ways of doing it too. The most popular ones being Kargyraa or Throat Singing and Subharmonic Singing. Throat Singing where the vocal folds and ventricular folds are being vibrated at the same time, creating the pitch that's an entire octave lower. Subharmonic singing relies solely on the vocal cords, where each flap is believed to vibrate at two different frequencies, essentially being an organized or "tamed" vocal fry. Both techniques have been used for a long time like in traditional Tuvan Throat Singing and Oktavism, but nowadays they even have more "modern" applications in music, notably beatboxing and acapella music.
The mechanical system includes the bow and the string and therefore when the correct pressure is applied the player has access to the overtone and undertones of a virtual unit which includes their combined mass as well as the mass of the arm weight applied by the player therefore in considering the range of frequencies possible one must explore the various harmonic modes of that combined system and not restrict themselves to considerations based solely on string length, seems fairly straight forward to me.
I literally just discovered this by accident when playing my cello today.
My thought is that not only does the string vibrate, but the bow hair can also vibrate. The low tone being heard when the right combination of bow and string resonance occurs. This is facilitated by both bow pressure and speed. (And probably several other variables I'm not aware of, such as how sticky the rosin is etc.)
Kind of real world aliasing 😊
Is "hey man, you've gotta check out some of this stuff" going to become a regular series now?
There's a bassoonist youtuber called Richard Bobo. On one of his latest videos he performed an Ab0 on contrabassoon, a whole tone below the lowest note possible on contrabassoon. What he did is play a multiphonic of notes form the harmonic series of Ab, "generating" an Ab. That's basically what's going on at the end of the video.
I watched this video as a break between studying for finals and I just have to say that this is an amazing video. You really explained the concept and theory surrounding it in depth within a short amount of time, and now I'm really interested to see if I can use it somehow. Anyway, I love your videos and am always excited for learning about some new musical concept. Keep up the good work!
FYI you can do this with your voice (not vocal fry or growling) but it takes a while to get the handle of it
I could hear that "ghost" fundamental C with headphones on! It's the same volume as the rest, but those upper pitches form a cluster that is so strident and overpowering. Fascinating. Thank you!
From what I understand, they use the phenomenon of hearing the fundamental from the harmonics to allow low frequencies to be perceived when smaller speakers that are less capable of projecting them are used. This kind of happens in the opposite direction though, where they use a harmonic exciter to amplify the overtones of the low frequencies. And that is how we hear a 30 Hz frequency out of little tiny speakers. But I also might be wrong, since I never really researched this on my own, so there's that.
aha! i've been searching for this video (the part with the harmonics making you hear a non-present fundamental) for so long!
Never noticed how much aliasing Operator produces! Great vid as ever Adam.
Tuvan throat singing has been around for a while, bro. Awesome stuff.
6:45 - isn’t the fundamental reconstructed through the overall periodicity of the harmonics though?
I don't totally understand what you are saying, but I enjoy it so much. TY
Well funny thing is in certain Asian regions a multiple-century-old singing style known as Kargyraa allows you to produce undertones (I've only gone down to the 3rd subharmonic yet).
You CAN use this subharmonics technique on your voice. Its very interesting, and it does produce a sound exactly one octave lower than the pitch you are actually singing (or speaking). If you know what vocal fry is, you can do this! Simply sing a note that is comfortably in your "low-ish" range, with your chest voice, or your normal singing voice. Then, gradually apply vocal fry, VERY VERY slowly. Keep starting with your chest voice and add vocal fry until the note becomes solidly vocal fry. At some point in this slow transition, your voice hit this subharmonic, but it was likely too fast to hear and just sounded like a "hiccup" of sorts. The technique is all about honing in on that small window of subharmonic resonance. Very fascinating!
you can do subharmonic using your voice
try sing a note then while singing it, relax your voice and if you do it correctly you can hear the undertone
one of the common example is the telephone. Our voice is transmitted in a bandwidth from 300Hz to 3kHz.
But our real voice is way lower than 300 Hz.
It's transmitted, in fact the upper harmonics content. Our brain is rebuilding what's downward.
You might find this interesting--in my senior year of college I prepared a piano with a speaker, a paper clip probe and a set of 9V batteries. I found that if I held the paper clip just right, the fuzzbox-ish sparks that came from the speaker were sometimes an octave or an octave and a fourth lower than the actual note. Same principle I'm sure
Speaking of missing fundamentals, even though the first partial might be missing, the periodicity of the complex signal equals that missing frequency, also called Residuum. Some pipe organs use that effect to generate sub bass without the need for huge pipes, e.g. a 16' + 10 2/3' registers to create the effect of a 32' register which would require a lot more space and air. Great video on a fascinating topic, go Adam!!
If you play the 2nd and 3rd harmonic, the sine waves add up to a function that repeats at the fundamental frequency. sin(2x)+sin(3x) repeats at the same frequency as sin(x).
Bro, I can't perform even the most basic musical feat. I listen to bands like Skinny Puppy and Ministry, but I always appreciate your videos. You explain, what seems like complex information, in a way that even I can follow. Keep it up!
4:25 I actually have that guitar it's my first Yamaha and it's great. Doesn't beat a Cordoba for my style but it's great overall highly recommend
As a trombone player, I've always been curious about things like this. For trombones, the fundamental note is "pedal Bb" so the 1st harmonic is Bb an octave higher. However, there is a way to place a sort of "half harmonic" where the note in first position is F. This is more than just lipping the note down as well, it's essentially another partial trombones can play on and while it doesn't sound pretty, its useful when it's a straight trombone that doesn't have an attachment to access more notes in between the fundamental and the 1st harmonic.
I'm not sure scientifically how this is possible and I've tried researching it to no avail.
Why, oh why is it that every time I watch an adam Neely video is it proceeded by a stop smoking ad.
I've never smoked in my life.
Two pitches together will give you a true difference frequency - IN THE AIR. It's easy to demonstrate with a Hammond Organ's drawbars, played through a speaker. Not only can you hear the new lower note, you can see it on a spectrum analyzer that's picking it up with a microphone.
Are you the voice of the yousician advertisement?
no, i'm not. i'd gladly take that gig, though.
oh wow it´s really similar. However, keep up the great videos, the content is always something special.