Nicholas Owens

10/20/14

Group Project
Noise is the irregularity of the vibrations of the eardrum caused by vibrations from its
surroundings. Music is a different form of sound in the sense that it has tones, or musical notes. These
tones/notes are more periodical and more unified than noise. Each note has a pitch, or a certain
frequency. The higher frequency notes have a higher the pitch and visa-versa. If you double the
frequency of a note, it will be the same note but one octave, or eight notes higher. The frequency of a
note can be changed by changing the size, the tightness or the mass of the object that is making the
note.
The measurement of the amplitude of a notes wave is its intensity. Intensity is measured in
watts/square meter. The lowest that the human ear can hear is 10 watts/meter squared, this is called 0
bel. 1 bel is equal to 10 decibels. 20 decibels is 10 times stronger than 10 decibels. Intensity deals with
the physical aspects of the wave, but loudness has to do with the physiological properties of the ear and
how it receives sound.
The quality or the color of the note is what helps us distinguish between one instrument from
the other. The quality describes the aspect of the note other than the pitch, loudness and length of the
note. Most musical sounds have different frequencies within it. The fundamental frequency is what
determines the pitch of the sound but there are also partial tones within the sound that create a
harmonic. Each musical instrument has a different quality to it that makes it unique. There are three
categories for instruments: wind, percussion and string. Each one vibrates the air in different ways.
Electronics create notes by moving electrons to generate signals.

Machines like phonographs use needles that go across grooves that vibrate the needles. This
vibration creates a tone necessary to play whatever they want even if it is a mixture of instruments
playing together. This is possible because a mathematician Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier discovered
irregularity in periodic wave motion. He found that even the most complex waves can be made into the
simplest waves, sine waves. And these sine waves are what the machines read. Our ears do the exact
same thing when we hear a lot of different noises. The signals picked up by vibrations such as a
phonograph are called analog signals. We are now in an age of digital signals. These signals are sent by
binary codes of ones and twos that are engraved or burned into pits. The digital readers use an optical
system that reads how deep and long the pit is and registers it.