Almost every musical sound contains at least two frequency components
Evidence
When we listen to music, it is very rare that it consists of just a single pure tone. While it is possible and relatively simple to arrange to listen to a pure tone of a particular frequency in a laboratory, or by means of an electronic synthesizer (a useful, important and valuable experience), such a sound would not sustain any prolonged musical interest. Almost every sound we hear in music consists of at least two frequency components. — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 1627
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
Related
- Music occupies a wider frequency and dynamic range than speech (similarity 0.85)
- Most instruments occupy only a portion of the audible frequency range (similarity 0.83)
- Perceptually distinct instrument timbres are practically infinite yet cluster into families (similarity 0.83)
- Sounds with prime-numbered partials lack a common fundamental pitch (similarity 0.82)
- Harmonic content alone produces recognizable, describable timbre qualities (similarity 0.81)
- Pitch strength of pure tones varies with their frequency (similarity 0.81)
- Most everyday sounds are harmonic complex tones, not pure tones (similarity 0.81)
- Statistical sound textures can be built from 30-ms overlapping pure tones across 2.2 octaves. (similarity 0.81)
- Accurate square waves require infinitely many harmonics (similarity 0.80)
- Upper harmonics swing more in frequency than lower ones during vibrato (similarity 0.80)
- Any complex tone is decomposable into sine wave components displayed as a spectrum (similarity 0.80)
- Steady-state frequency curves misrepresent how transient music interacts with reflections. (similarity 0.80)
- Realistic periodic sound sources generate many harmonics, not single frequencies. (similarity 0.80)
- A pure audible tone’s only correlate is a single sinusoid (similarity 0.80)
- Different musical genres are defined by how much they use dissonant chords (similarity 0.79)