If you go to school to be an audio engineer, you’re gonna hear an awful lot about frequency. And yeah, sure, we measure it in cycles per second, or hertz. And yep, frequency is the foundation for understanding pitch, and that informs at least half of everything I can think of about music theory.
But we often neglect to appreciate that in the wild, you’re almost never hearing a single note. Almost every sound is a carrier with stowaways, these symbiotic hitchhikers piggybacking on top of it. And these notes follow a pattern that we call the harmonic series.
It’s almost inescapable. That serves as the foundation for harmony, and it explains why some notes go together better than others. Here, I’m selectively damping the carrier frequency to allow you to hear its harmonics.
I’m not creating these notes with my finger, I’m revealing them by muting the lower carrier frequencies that may have been obscuring them. These notes were there all along. But for me, the magic lies in perception.
You don’t have an ear for every pitch you hear. Sound is no more than your brain registering rapid changes in air pressure, not unlike a barometer. There’s only one air pressure at any given time, at any given point in space.
So appreciating the fact that you can perceive two notes with one ear isn’t something that’s just going to help you with audio engineering and music theory. It’s one of the most profoundly beautiful and interesting phenomena I can think of. If you or someone belongs in my upcoming musician basics elective, please share this post.
