Clarinets (other than saxes and, for example, an oboe) actually have a cylindrical bore. It's what makes them overblow to the twelfth (not to the octave like the others), also it sounds an octave lower than an instrument of the same length with a conical bore.
Arrgh, thanks for the correction. I've been walking around with my incorrect "conical bore" factoid for a while. That helps explain the timbral difference.
@@s.m8766 Yes, because it has a conical bore like a sax. But it's wooden, and mine uses a clarinet mouthpiece, so I can't think of anything closer to a "conical bore clarinet." It does sound more like a clarinet than a soprano sax does. It also has a bit of an oboe or English horn (cor anglais) sound.
Many instruments are defined by their attack and decay. Remove this and identification becomes difficult. The Hammond Organ uses nine harmonic drawbars to simulate organ pipe lengths or harmonics of the basic tone. These can be mixed in combinations to produce the timbre of many musical instruments. Percussion can then be added, either second or third harmonic with short or long delay and also with soft or loud attack. However, it still sounds like a Hammond Organ especially with a Leslie speaker and that is because I know what it is. But would someone unfamiliar be able to identify an instrumental tone by copying the harmonics on the Hammond drawbars? Of course this system enables the synthesis of sounds that cannot be reproduced by musical instruments. This makes the Hammond Organ the first synthesizer, built from 1935 and still being made today !!!
calling the hammond a synth is a bit of a stretch if we compare it to modern synthesizers. even then, there were similar instruments before it that would also fit that broad definition of a "synthesizer", like the trautonium, telharmonium and others.
Excellent video on instrumental timbre perception. Thank you so much ! One of the very early experiments of this kind was done in the early 1950s at the national French radio, by the French engineer and composer Pierre Schaeffer, the founder of "musique concrète" ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Schaeffer ). --> "...he found it was possible to remove the familiarity of musical instrument sounds and abstract them further by techniques such as removing the attack of the recorded sound."
8/12 here. The similarity in timbre with the piano, sitar, mandolin, and banjo blew my mind. I struggled with the upright bass and violin and had the upright piano switched with the sitar. Wild how important attack and decay are for the character of an instruments' sound. Great video!
I got 10/12 and missed 1 and 2 as I had them reversed. I REALLY struggled with 6 and 7 though and had to re-listen multiple time to compare them. I had first guessed #6 as the upright bass and #7 as the sitar but then decided #7 might be the bass and 6 the guitar but then heard #9 and it has that weird overtone that had me decide that 9 was the sitar so maybe 7 was the piano. Then 10 was a bit more hollow/resonate so that also helped put the piano at 7. I would have been WAY off if I only got one chance at them and only the one listen. Oh, I also had #4 as the Flute until I heard #12 and changed #4 to whistle. The flute is just a hair more "breathy" as the air is blown across instead of into the instrument.
This was a real wake-up call for me 😄I'm a music RUclipsr (though mostly collab w/ artists like Daisy O'Connor) and I'm always on the lookout for RUclipsrs who inspire me; thanks for being that person today. I'm subscribed now!
(SPOILER ALERT) I did expect it to be super hard. We don't know the 'sound' of the instruments by their timbre only. Anyway, here's my guesses. I guess I'm lucky I got 5/12 correct. 1 side blown flute 2 sitar 3 banjo ! 4 whistle ! 5 melodica ! 6 saxophone 7 pizzicato violin 8 clarinet ! 9 mandolin 10 upright bass ! 11 acoustic guitar (didn't sound like it but was last) 12 upright piano (didn't sound like it but was last)
i was worried you werent going to post anymore seeing the "1 year ago" in the description but i saw you hearted a comment made 2 weeks ago. glad you're still doing good!
I got 4 good answers, you are right. This is difficult. I used to play the clarinet, so that one I had in the pocket already and recognized the sax too. Very interesting topic!! I like your beard btw, I wish mine is same as you have!!😎💪🏻👍🏻
clarinet (nope, violin) mandolin [Correct!] sitar (nope, banjo) flute (nope, whistle) melodica [Correct!] acoustic guitar [Correct!] piano [Correct!] sax (nope, Clarinet) banjo (nope, sitar) upright bass [Correct!] violin (nope, Sax) whistle (nope, flute) Got whistle and flute confused, and somehow sitar and banjo. I seem to have gotten the instruments that are more familiar to me more consistently correct.
Excellent demonstration! I got 7 of 12. I had trouble with the instruments I'm not familiar with, which shows how much I was relying on memory rather than actively listening.
Am I the only one who thinks the sitar was one of the easiest? Instantly identifiable and not like the piano to me (which I think is much harder.) If you cut off the attack and decay on a flute and whistle it's literally the same instrument so that's kind of cheating. People have probably already mentioned the clarinet is cylindrical and missing every other harmonic in the tone which makes it instantly identifiable. Very few instruments resonate in this way. I think maybe the Duduk does but that has a double reed? also the pan flute. Would be interesting to see if those instruments actually start to sound similar if you chop off the most identifiable bits of the sound.
You are not the only one although without the attack, I was a little bit surprised that the upper harmonic twang was harder to identify than I thought it would be, as the piano had some of that which I wasn't expecting and had #7 as the sitar initially, until I heard #9 which was more obviously the sitar.
Oh wow, no, hadn't seen that. Crazy how similar the video is. Man, just when you think you bring something new to youtube. And I'm not jealous of his 800k views at all. :-)
@@CaseyConnor I think your video still serves a unique (be it similar) purpose for one, yours has twice as many sounds, and for two, its designed primarily as an activity for the viewer, whereas Andrew's video was primarily geared towards showing Andrew's friends processing it
9/12 I had: Violin as Banjo Mandolin as Violin Banjo as Mandolin I had far more trouble with those plus the upright bass than with any of the others. This was my best effort with a lot of replays too. I'm not a musician and without replays I think I could only say whether it's a wind or string instrument lol. I would never have thought an upright piano could have sounded so similar to a sitar.
Well obviously if you don't exclude studio manipulation.. Every instrument sounds the same.. But I'll give it a try. Guarantee fail but who knows. But not being a musical band leader or. Musical sound engineer.. Just a fan. So let's go..
I got 12/12! I had to listen through two times all the way through to be confident, and it took me the second try to even fill in the space for me the violin, mandolin, and the upright bass. I guessed everything else first try except for switching the flute and whistle which I knew i’d have some trouble with from the beginning.
I got all 12 right but I've seen this test before and I definitely scratched out most of my first guesses after another sound came along that was even more obviously what I'd thought a previous one was haha
I was right for about 10, its just the flute and the whistle that I gaffed I had to think to tell the difference between the sitar and the mandolin though, they have that twang up in the higher frequencies
I mixed up the whistle and the flute, but got the rest -- even though a few I wasn't sure of. I'm surprised I did as well as I did, but I did go back and forth listening a bit. I think hearing a recording as opposed to the live instrument makes it more difficult. Is part of the "game" making the volumes similar?
Yeah for sure, they were volume-normalized... and as mentioned in the video the tails were faded to be closer to each other. And yeah I would imagine hearing them live would make it easier, even if you could somehow figure out how to mask the attack and decay...
This effect has certain consequences for vocal production. Similar to immediately being able to tell if a person has a cold, despite never having heard their personal voice.
6/12 After the first play-through, I knew I wasn't going to score well. Most of the strings sounded like sitars to me. :D 20 years ago (when my ears worked), I probably would've scored better. I love classical music, so I was a bit surprised I didn't do better. Great video! That was fun.
I got 9/12. I had Flute where Whistle was (4), Whistle where Sax was (11), and Sax where Flute was (12). Not surprising that Wind instruments were my downfall as I play Stringed (Guitar, Piano, Banjo).
This test makes no sense to me, when the instrument is recorded with a musical phrase and complete from the start, I can recognize it also, when the frequencies above 4 kHz are filtered out.
1:47 and here you start to rig the game, I feel click-baited. The attack and sustain are a big portion on the instrument, so stop claiming we cannot guess them by their "sound" if all we get is a small portion of its sound.
Clarinets (other than saxes and, for example, an oboe) actually have a cylindrical bore. It's what makes them overblow to the twelfth (not to the octave like the others), also it sounds an octave lower than an instrument of the same length with a conical bore.
Arrgh, thanks for the correction. I've been walking around with my incorrect "conical bore" factoid for a while. That helps explain the timbral difference.
If you want to try a conical bore clarinet, you can borrow my tárogató sometime. It's the "modern" single reed type.
@@JeffLeff tarogato is more like a wooden soprano sax, isn't it?
@@s.m8766 Yes, because it has a conical bore like a sax. But it's wooden, and mine uses a clarinet mouthpiece, so I can't think of anything closer to a "conical bore clarinet." It does sound more like a clarinet than a soprano sax does. It also has a bit of an oboe or English horn (cor anglais) sound.
Many instruments are defined by their attack and decay. Remove this and identification becomes difficult.
The Hammond Organ uses nine harmonic drawbars to simulate organ pipe lengths or harmonics of the basic tone. These can be mixed in combinations to produce the timbre of many musical instruments. Percussion can then be added, either second or third harmonic with short or long delay and also with soft or loud attack. However, it still sounds like a Hammond Organ especially with a Leslie speaker and that is because I know what it is. But would someone unfamiliar be able to identify an instrumental tone by copying the harmonics on the Hammond drawbars? Of course this system enables the synthesis of sounds that cannot be reproduced by musical instruments. This makes the Hammond Organ the first synthesizer, built from 1935 and still being made today !!!
calling the hammond a synth is a bit of a stretch if we compare it to modern synthesizers. even then, there were similar instruments before it that would also fit that broad definition of a "synthesizer", like the trautonium, telharmonium and others.
well that was really surprisingly impossible
"I hope that was interesting" haha what an understatement
The sitar has an afterklang which are high-pitched overtones that fall in a rapid sequence during the decay.
Excellent video on instrumental timbre perception. Thank you so much ! One of the very early experiments of this kind was done in the early 1950s at the national French radio, by the French engineer and composer Pierre Schaeffer, the founder of "musique concrète" ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Schaeffer ). --> "...he found it was possible to remove the familiarity of musical instrument sounds and abstract them further by techniques such as removing the attack of the recorded sound."
8/12 here. The similarity in timbre with the piano, sitar, mandolin, and banjo blew my mind. I struggled with the upright bass and violin and had the upright piano switched with the sitar. Wild how important attack and decay are for the character of an instruments' sound. Great video!
I got 10/12 and missed 1 and 2 as I had them reversed. I REALLY struggled with 6 and 7 though and had to re-listen multiple time to compare them. I had first guessed #6 as the upright bass and #7 as the sitar but then decided #7 might be the bass and 6 the guitar but then heard #9 and it has that weird overtone that had me decide that 9 was the sitar so maybe 7 was the piano. Then 10 was a bit more hollow/resonate so that also helped put the piano at 7. I would have been WAY off if I only got one chance at them and only the one listen. Oh, I also had #4 as the Flute until I heard #12 and changed #4 to whistle. The flute is just a hair more "breathy" as the air is blown across instead of into the instrument.
This was a real wake-up call for me 😄I'm a music RUclipsr (though mostly collab w/ artists like Daisy O'Connor) and I'm always on the lookout for RUclipsrs who inspire me; thanks for being that person today. I'm subscribed now!
(SPOILER ALERT)
I did expect it to be super hard. We don't know the 'sound' of the instruments by their timbre only. Anyway, here's my guesses. I guess I'm lucky I got 5/12 correct.
1 side blown flute
2 sitar
3 banjo !
4 whistle !
5 melodica !
6 saxophone
7 pizzicato violin
8 clarinet !
9 mandolin
10 upright bass !
11 acoustic guitar (didn't sound like it but was last)
12 upright piano (didn't sound like it but was last)
This was a neat experiment. Thanks for sharing.
That was surprisingly hard. My guess is…
Bass, mandolin, banjo, whistle, melodica, guitar, piano, clarinet, sitar, violin, sax, flute
i was worried you werent going to post anymore seeing the "1 year ago" in the description but i saw you hearted a comment made 2 weeks ago. glad you're still doing good!
I got 4 good answers, you are right. This is difficult. I used to play the clarinet, so that one I had in the pocket already and recognized the sax too. Very interesting topic!!
I like your beard btw, I wish mine is same as you have!!😎💪🏻👍🏻
I also got 4 right :-
Banjo, Bass, Saxophone and Flute.
Maybe because I've played flute for a few months 😅.
In Andrew Huang's test from his video on this he had cello and electric guitar and they were super similar which was shocking
Casey, give my attack and decay back. I thought i could guess all of them.
I got 6/12. I mixed up three pairs of instruments, upright bass and violin, piano and acoustic guitar, flute and whistle.
I watch your video because your accent so incredible. Your mic is freaking clear 😂😂😂
clarinet (nope, violin)
mandolin [Correct!]
sitar (nope, banjo)
flute (nope, whistle)
melodica [Correct!]
acoustic guitar [Correct!]
piano [Correct!]
sax (nope, Clarinet)
banjo (nope, sitar)
upright bass [Correct!]
violin (nope, Sax)
whistle (nope, flute)
Got whistle and flute confused, and somehow sitar and banjo.
I seem to have gotten the instruments that are more familiar to me more consistently correct.
Excellent demonstration!
I got 7 of 12. I had trouble with the instruments I'm not familiar with, which shows how much I was relying on memory rather than actively listening.
Am I the only one who thinks the sitar was one of the easiest? Instantly identifiable and not like the piano to me (which I think is much harder.) If you cut off the attack and decay on a flute and whistle it's literally the same instrument so that's kind of cheating. People have probably already mentioned the clarinet is cylindrical and missing every other harmonic in the tone which makes it instantly identifiable. Very few instruments resonate in this way. I think maybe the Duduk does but that has a double reed? also the pan flute. Would be interesting to see if those instruments actually start to sound similar if you chop off the most identifiable bits of the sound.
You are not the only one although without the attack, I was a little bit surprised that the upper harmonic twang was harder to identify than I thought it would be, as the piano had some of that which I wasn't expecting and had #7 as the sitar initially, until I heard #9 which was more obviously the sitar.
6/12 Well, at least I got something :)
Also, your back! Yay!! 😄
I got Bass, Flute and Whistle correct
have you seen when Andrew Huang did this with a few of his music youtuber friends in 2017? His video is titled "Weird music test you have to try!"
Oh wow, no, hadn't seen that. Crazy how similar the video is. Man, just when you think you bring something new to youtube. And I'm not jealous of his 800k views at all. :-)
@@CaseyConnor I think your video still serves a unique (be it similar) purpose
for one, yours has twice as many sounds, and for two, its designed primarily as an activity for the viewer, whereas Andrew's video was primarily geared towards showing Andrew's friends processing it
9/12
I had:
Violin as Banjo
Mandolin as Violin
Banjo as Mandolin
I had far more trouble with those plus the upright bass than with any of the others. This was my best effort with a lot of replays too.
I'm not a musician and without replays I think I could only say whether it's a wind or string instrument lol.
I would never have thought an upright piano could have sounded so similar to a sitar.
9/12 is really good!
I got 8/12, i actually inverted flute with whistle and violin with upright bass, but i got the piano and guitar correctly it felt so good !
Ty for everything.😊
To chop off the start makes some sounds similar. That was the disadvantage of the Optogan
The video setting and quality is awesome, but I think a different thumbnail would be awesome
Well obviously if you don't exclude studio manipulation..
Every instrument sounds the same..
But I'll give it a try. Guarantee fail but who knows.
But not being a musical band leader or. Musical sound engineer..
Just a fan.
So let's go..
I got 12/12! I had to listen through two times all the way through to be confident, and it took me the second try to even fill in the space for me the violin, mandolin, and the upright bass. I guessed everything else first try except for switching the flute and whistle which I knew i’d have some trouble with from the beginning.
Wow, impressive. I think one or maybe two people only have posted a 12. :-) I recorded the samples and I think I'd only get like 10.
"but we're gonna do a little bit of an unusual experiment here to see how good your discrimination skills actually are"
_my time has come_
only got one answer but that feels like a victory since I'm really bad with timbre
I got all 12 right but I've seen this test before and I definitely scratched out most of my first guesses after another sound came along that was even more obviously what I'd thought a previous one was haha
Damn, 12 out of 12 must put you at the top of the leaderboard. :-)
PianoX, mandolin1, banjo2, clarinetX, melodica3, acoustic4, violinX, saxX, sitar5, bass6, whistleX , flute7
I got 7 right...
Need more
I was right for about 10, its just the flute and the whistle that I gaffed
I had to think to tell the difference between the sitar and the mandolin though, they have that twang up in the higher frequencies
Nice work!
I mixed up the whistle and the flute, but got the rest -- even though a few I wasn't sure of. I'm surprised I did as well as I did, but I did go back and forth listening a bit. I think hearing a recording as opposed to the live instrument makes it more difficult. Is part of the "game" making the volumes similar?
Yeah for sure, they were volume-normalized... and as mentioned in the video the tails were faded to be closer to each other. And yeah I would imagine hearing them live would make it easier, even if you could somehow figure out how to mask the attack and decay...
This effect has certain consequences for vocal production.
Similar to immediately being able to tell if a person has a cold,
despite never having heard their personal voice.
6/12 After the first play-through, I knew I wasn't going to score well. Most of the strings sounded like sitars to me. :D 20 years ago (when my ears worked), I probably would've scored better. I love classical music, so I was a bit surprised I didn't do better. Great video! That was fun.
I got 9/12. I had Flute where Whistle was (4), Whistle where Sax was (11), and Sax where Flute was (12). Not surprising that Wind instruments were my downfall as I play Stringed (Guitar, Piano, Banjo).
9/12 is great, though, nice work. :-)
@@CaseyConnor It took a number of listens to get those 9 right, but I did come to the 9/12 before viewing the reveal.
This test makes no sense to me, when the instrument is recorded with a musical phrase and complete from the start, I can recognize it also, when the frequencies above 4 kHz are filtered out.
You missed an instrument(identifying)
Yeah, the clarinet was the only instrument that really stood out to me in the modified instruments.
Yeah epic fail on my part..
I have no idea..
i get every instruments wrong, but at least now my ears have programmed to recognise G tone
10/12! But damn wtf!!!
The whistle is deeper
1:47 and here you start to rig the game, I feel click-baited. The attack and sustain are a big portion on the instrument, so stop claiming we cannot guess them by their "sound" if all we get is a small portion of its sound.
/ would say that this is G note.
1/12 i only the mandolin right
ridiculous premise. If you leave only the timbre, it's not the sound of the instrument anymore. The test is meaningless.