Physics of the Mute

The bulk of the musical talk
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imperialbari
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Another sermon from the heretic:

Post by imperialbari »

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Last edited by imperialbari on Sun Feb 04, 2007 1:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
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DonShirer
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Post by DonShirer »

Good topic. What you need are some sound spectra of the same note played with and without a mute. Perhaps someone (Rick Denney?) has some available they could post.

If not, you could pick up a computer program which can do spectral analyses. Record two long tones (one muted) into a wave file (no compression). Use a sound editor to chop out an even number of cycles (64 or 128 is good) of the fundamental pitch and feed that into your spectrum program. Pay particular attention to the ratio of the fundamental to the 2d, 3d, etc harmonics. You will probably find considerable differences across the range of the instrument depending on what type of mute you use.

Don S.
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