Piano Forum
Piano Board => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: stormx on May 31, 2005, 06:12:05 PM
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Hi !! :) :)
I know each note produces a sound with an specific frequency (like A above middle C, whose frequency should be 440 MHz).
I wonder, when you play a chord, say C-E-G...what is the frequency of the resulting sound?
Why does it sound different from a single note with that frequency?
Sorry if this are obvious questions, but my knowledge of the physics of music is almost non existent... :-\ :-\
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I think that is actually a very complicated question as it relates to the piano and I shall leave it to a tuner to answer you properly. In theory you could reason that the period of a combination is the lowest common multiple of the periods of the individual notes. For a start the piano is not exact in that sense anyway and secondly what the ear perceives is a separate issue again. I look forward with interest to any replies.
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A chord consists of sound waves of more than one frequency. You can't reduce it to one frequency.
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When you have multiple waves hitting each other, they combine to form one wave. However, it's not always a nice sine graph like an C would make.
https://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/schroedinger/
There's a little thing on that website that'll let you see how different frequencies interact.