For any string on the guitar, there is the fundamental frequency or the note of an E on the highest string. A note is much more than a note and this necessarily gets into some Mister Wizard material but there are rainbows at the end of it.
The E note you hear is, from the standpoint of physics, comprised of a harmonic series of frequencies. The E is the fundamental harmonic or vibration of the string but there are multiple other harmonic vibrations of the string and it's the combination of them which produces the actual sound. It's only important to get the conceptual aspect in that a string vibrates in multiple frequencies at the same time. The physics of it provide all sorts of important insights but the basic fact of it is what produces the nature of a sound.
Maybe you're making a salad and it has nothing but lettuce. There's your fundamental as a salad always has to have lettuce. What makes it interesting is what other ingredients you toss into it and this is not so far different from the way a harmonic series will apply to different strings and different instruments, each one will make a different salad and a different sound even though that difference may be exquisitely subtle.
Any given harmonic within the series is known as a partial and its strength, as opposed to its frequency, is what will color the perceived sound. This is why electric guitar is always my far and away favorite as making the audio louder is only a small part of it. Playing at volume means the external effects on the string from vibration through the floor and the air become significant. That can result in feedback which is artful or unpleasant depending on how you do it. Behind it is which harmonics in the series are being emphasized at any given time.
The same physical aspect comes from the guitar's twang bar as a string will have its natural decay rate at which the vibrations quell back to nothing but the twang bar alters that substantially by adding more vibration and eliciting even more after that by encouraging feedback. The consequence is the sum of these processes extends substantially the partials one can reach and emphasize and thus, to my taste, it enriches the sound of the instrument.
Note: all of this applies to an acoustic guitar as a harmonic series applies precisely the same to any note it makes and the purity of the instrument is in the partials in that series which are not distorted or manipulated by anything. It's a different sensibility as my preference is unlikely to change away from doing things with guitars which sometimes make speakers explode.
Sometimes guitarists will mention 'playing harmonics' but there's no way anyone really can because anything you hear will have multiple vibrations so there's no way to isolate a single harmonic.
When 'playing a harmonic,' the guitarist lightly touches the string at the twelfth fret (i.e. an octave above an open E) and plucks it. This technique raises the pitch of the note you hear because the lowest partial (i.e. the fundamental) is much higher. It's also the reason it doesn't work unless you pluck evenly-divisible notes within the octave to produce the harmonic as otherwise the vibrations will cancel each other out.
So that's today's exercise on how music theory is like making a salad. And this isn't even compositional theory, this is only for what it sounds like.
Note: my knowledge of physics is right up there with how to make French sauces (i.e. near zero) so the terminology may not be razor sharp but the general concepts are accurate.
(Ed: where's the rainbow?)
All of the partials in the harmonic series for a note are the different colors in the rainbow. Electric guitars are for when you want to try to get into infrared and ultraviolet to make color combinations no-one ever saw before. There is no physical equivalence in the frequencies but that's what it looks like to play. Success in my music is when other people see the rainbows too.
The E note you hear is, from the standpoint of physics, comprised of a harmonic series of frequencies. The E is the fundamental harmonic or vibration of the string but there are multiple other harmonic vibrations of the string and it's the combination of them which produces the actual sound. It's only important to get the conceptual aspect in that a string vibrates in multiple frequencies at the same time. The physics of it provide all sorts of important insights but the basic fact of it is what produces the nature of a sound.
Maybe you're making a salad and it has nothing but lettuce. There's your fundamental as a salad always has to have lettuce. What makes it interesting is what other ingredients you toss into it and this is not so far different from the way a harmonic series will apply to different strings and different instruments, each one will make a different salad and a different sound even though that difference may be exquisitely subtle.
Any given harmonic within the series is known as a partial and its strength, as opposed to its frequency, is what will color the perceived sound. This is why electric guitar is always my far and away favorite as making the audio louder is only a small part of it. Playing at volume means the external effects on the string from vibration through the floor and the air become significant. That can result in feedback which is artful or unpleasant depending on how you do it. Behind it is which harmonics in the series are being emphasized at any given time.
The same physical aspect comes from the guitar's twang bar as a string will have its natural decay rate at which the vibrations quell back to nothing but the twang bar alters that substantially by adding more vibration and eliciting even more after that by encouraging feedback. The consequence is the sum of these processes extends substantially the partials one can reach and emphasize and thus, to my taste, it enriches the sound of the instrument.
Note: all of this applies to an acoustic guitar as a harmonic series applies precisely the same to any note it makes and the purity of the instrument is in the partials in that series which are not distorted or manipulated by anything. It's a different sensibility as my preference is unlikely to change away from doing things with guitars which sometimes make speakers explode.
Sometimes guitarists will mention 'playing harmonics' but there's no way anyone really can because anything you hear will have multiple vibrations so there's no way to isolate a single harmonic.
When 'playing a harmonic,' the guitarist lightly touches the string at the twelfth fret (i.e. an octave above an open E) and plucks it. This technique raises the pitch of the note you hear because the lowest partial (i.e. the fundamental) is much higher. It's also the reason it doesn't work unless you pluck evenly-divisible notes within the octave to produce the harmonic as otherwise the vibrations will cancel each other out.
So that's today's exercise on how music theory is like making a salad. And this isn't even compositional theory, this is only for what it sounds like.
Note: my knowledge of physics is right up there with how to make French sauces (i.e. near zero) so the terminology may not be razor sharp but the general concepts are accurate.
(Ed: where's the rainbow?)
All of the partials in the harmonic series for a note are the different colors in the rainbow. Electric guitars are for when you want to try to get into infrared and ultraviolet to make color combinations no-one ever saw before. There is no physical equivalence in the frequencies but that's what it looks like to play. Success in my music is when other people see the rainbows too.
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