Unlike with whistling, it seems that the reed actually blocks the vocal component while it is closed, resulting in true heterodyning of frequencies, something you do not get in other instruments. The result is that you get not only the original tones but also the sum and difference frequencies. Not having a woodwind I cannot investigate this.
@@EvE-zenbymryeah like wait you basically just showed that combining two pure tones makes a superposition which contains both tones in a single waveform. Basic audio sense. But there’s obviously a ton more complicated stuff with how your vocal cords’ ability to output clean sound is manipulated by the opening and closing of the reed. Also, I suspect that most of the distortion simply comes from having two different sounds trying to resonate in the same chamber. Only one tone and its harmonics can resonate in the tube at a time so maybe them “fighting each other” is causing the distortion. I can confirm that it’s not just the reed, because growling or singing while playing is totally a real thing on flutes and other free reeds. Vocal folds are not being externally manipulated in those cases. I can also attest to this because I can feel extra vibrations in my throat and weird back pressure feeling when trying to sing while play a reed instrument. And a lot of the time it’s really hard to even sing a note while your mouth is closed on the reed and blowing.
@@Jwellsuhhuh Yeah, i can't really contest what you're saying. I kinda just got lost in the weeds, and forgot to really tie it up with this particular point both in my own head and in the video.
@@Jwellsuhhuh There's probably a lot going on with the technology Coling Stetson is using. I wonder how much the sax interferes with the throat's resonance and gets picked up by the throat mic. also, slight harmonic distortion from the amplifier circuits will probably exaggerate the 'difference tones' because the tops and bottoms of the soundwave are sliced off (that's why 'power chords' on the electric guitar sound so gutsy. Perfect 5ths played with distortion bring out that difference tone - partly because distortion also flattens out the difference in amplitude between the louder and quieter components of the sound. I'm describing more deliberate distortion, whereas colin doesn't seem to be using it explicitly in these examples, so it may only be a subtle effect, if it's there at all.
I could be wrong, but as a saxophone player, I believe most of the sounds are coming from multiphonics (using unique key combinations to create gritty chords), which usually have a growling aspect to them, rather than just growls themselves. Great video still, you made me find out about an amazing artist, but you may have gotten that wrong.
yeah, it seems so, and honestly i'm a little nervous lmao. i've just been watching the notifications slowly tick up and checking the view count. all i can hope for is that any accuracies in the video get corrected by wiser people, and/or that whatever useful info i've said gets used elsewhere.
Interesting seeing this as a violinist. We don't have growls obviously, but we do have Tartini tones which seem to work quite similarly to what you're describing. Also Colin Stetson is awesome
You as string family, have more pressure of the bow to create a similar effect, going all the way up to the scratching, and is obviusly notated very differently
As someone who plays a lot with guitar distortion pedals and with synthesizers, as soon as you started talking about singing a melody into the mouthpiece, I generally understood what was going on. Manipulating generated harmonics similar to this is a common thing in electronic instruments like that.
We, string players can experiment this phenomenon with the resulting sound of a double stop. For example if we listen carefully, playing D open string and B on the A string (a major sixth interval, but the B has to be a bit flat, so that we get into just intonation system rather than 12-TET) we can hear a G (one octave lower than G open string). In the harmonic series of this resulting G we can find those D and B in their third and fifth harmonic, respectively. It is so cool, even the tuner catches it. My teacher used to say that discovering this in his Baroque studies made him play with a richer and more birilliant sound, since you are using the natural overtones and undertones of the instrument and the frequencies of the strings you are not playing in your favour. Playing Bach with this mindset, for example, the Prelude of the E major violin Partita, is mind blowing and a game changer. It is besutiful to play and diacover this things and experiment.
playing a saxophone like a digeridoo, dang you should probably look into digeridoo playing in case it has any insights, but i have no clue if theres any relation
I love doing this with my bass clarinet (which matches my vocal range, so it gets even more fun), and I've noticed that the interesting stuff happens when I try to approach simple intervals. interestingly, when I try to go for a unison or octave, I have to push harder and the sound chokes itself periodically, depending on how close I've come to the note
This explanation makes sense with pure vocals as well! Subharmonics and vocal fry are one in the same, and this is a great explanation of how connected they are. Similarly, I love music that messes with sound on a more “fundamental” level, so the precise manipulation of harmonic frequencies in live performance are astounding to me
isn't it the interference pattern? like the way that if you play two clean tones at the same time but one is slightly higher than the other you'll hear a slow volume oscillation because of the interference, and if the difference is big enough it'll create a tone? when i play a perfect 4th on the guitar (esp distorted) i can often hear the lower note a 5th below the bottom of the 4th (i think for a similar reason?)
Great video and clear explanation of the concepts! I’m definitely going to send this to other composers and performers as a resource. Two quick notes or add ons. The “official” name of the technique is generally vocalization or singing while playing when doing things like Colin Stetson. Generally growling is more often referred to when, like you mentioned, the resultant pitches are less determinate. Also, I don’t think you necessarily mentioned it in your video, but a really cool effect you can pull off is getting a resultant pitch lower than the lowest note of the instrument. Colin Stetson uses this in some of his music and I did in my newest piece but if you drone a note and sing a 5th above, you’ll get an octave below the played pitch, same with a 4th (5th below played). Also thanks for mentioning the harmonic series, that’s the only way this stuff works is with just intonation so it’s great you focused so much on the ratios!
Carl Maria von Weber wrote some chords to be produced by singing while playing the horn in his Concertino for Horn and Orchestra. Listen at 11:30 to about 12:15 in this video: ruclips.net/video/31BM9DlIbIU/видео.htmlsi=kxVVGwgFV7sKbLU5
Yo. Thank you for this comment. I've been doing subharmonic singing to a limited degree for a while now, and i've never been able to find anyone attesting to second subharmonic singing, but ruclips.net/video/7PddsnKsUEg/видео.html here he is demonstrating it.
So if I understood that correctly it is basically physical fm (frequency modulation)? fm being the technique which is also used to create dubstep growls
3:20 i think it's worth mentioning this is a 12 TET approximation of the harmonic series, and not actually itself. but i would agree that would open up a can of worms that perhaps wouldn't be to the point of the video. (funnily enough, earlier today i responded to a fresh reply to my 3 year old comment i made on some video, about the exact same thing.)
Yeah, whole can o worms there. It *is* why i put in that little "but this is usually not of practical interest to a performer" line during the explanation, though i'm not sure how much that actually communicated that.
I'm working on digital synthesizers for EWI and one of my points is to add some vocalizing effects to it. I'm happy that I've procrastinated all the way, until somebody else done usefull material on a subject! Thanks, man. And thanks to the algorithm that showed me this video.
At 2:23, where you have notated the 4th note in the lower voice as an X, actually I hear a destinct C#. Together with the G in the other voice this creates the dominant tritone. I also hear the next note as an A not a D. Anyone else?
Ah, a fellow perfect pitch haver. Yeah, i hear the C# too, but tbh i just can't explain it. The A in the next note is probably an overtone? I hear a D, and that combination of pitches has already occurred in the song when you hear it.
Nice! Thanks for sharing and also shout out to "Adult Swim", I noticed their logo in the clips, haven't seen this particular clip on broadcast but imagine maybe on their social media or RUclips? if people are not familiar with that cartoon Network programming it's really worth checking out some very avant guarde stuff going on there, for instance "off the air"for one, this is something I would not be surprised to hear as music used in some of the pieces on that series.
The clip where the Adult Swim logo is visible is the recording of Between Water And Wind, which is the fourth video listed in the description. It's a video of a performance from the channel's virtual music festival (Adult Swim Festival) in 2020. Stetson's full set was previously visible on Adult Swim's own channel, but they took it down at a later date for unknown reasons (probably just to reduce the number of videos on their channel, or something). The full performance is now available on Stetson's own channel, which is where the description links to.
@@EvE-zenbymr great! Thanks so much for that! And yes they have so much interesting content they just probably had to open some space up there. I'm definitely subscribing to Stetson's channel right now! And I'll look for that adult swim festival as well, sounds very interesting! Thanks again!
Nice! I'm super into the "harmonic series", would really like to know how it was originated, not just how it was named and observed but physicist don't seem to have that answer so far. (And I'm not talking about religion here, I am looking for a scientific answer.) There are rhythms embedded in the harmonies and vice versa and many of these rhythms are quite elemental like the two in three rhythms. I find it delightful and not all that surprising that even some most basic nerve impulses is depend on a two-by-three Ion exchange, the "sodium potassium pump", and that if you speed up that rhythmic relationship enough it becomes the perfect fifth which is the strongest in the harmonic series after the octave. From where did these relationships originate? The big bang? It's a good guess as far as I'm concerned.
Guy's strong law of small numbers: there aren't enough small numbers to meet the many demands made of them. Basically, small numbers are inevitably gonna appear a lot, so there's gonna be a lot of coincidences like this. It probably doesn't mean anything in particular.
@@EvE-zenbymr i'll have to look up that even though I'm not strong in my math I have some intuition in these things. For instance look at the proton/neutron one-to 0 ratio in hydrogen and then in helium I believe it's a two to two, those were the first elements to form in the universe along with a small amount of lithium which has 3 protons, so it seems that as numbers were able to build up and kind of "dance" (as neutrons "dance" with protons) in that way might be a clue as to the origins of some of this stuff.
@@EvE-zenbymr yes I think when we get into the "infinite" or or the "it just is" area that's just because we haven't yet gotten enough information. someday I think there will be more data as it seems to be the case in most of the sciences over the years. However we can come to observing the first moments will depend on technology advancing I think we've gotten smaller than femtoseconds but a lot happened in those first moments and people are stretching to try to see what happened will probably find our answers there but for the meantime we can just enjoy music and being musicians which is probably one of the best ways to experience this kind of thing including Dance.
I feel like the explanation of why we hear a lower product frequency is wrong, or at least incomplete: You don't just hear the "frequency" of the product wave, since it's not a sine wave - you only hear the frequencies of the sine waves that it's composed of. Just try playing A3 = 220Hz and C#4 = 550Hz on a piano or using a sine wave generator, you won't hear A2 = 110Hz, even though that's exactly the example around 6:56. There has to be more going with the singing and instrument interacting.
Yeah, i sorta left out the precise mechanical explanation of how it happens inside the instrument. Partly because i didn't fully synthesize all of that info, and also partly because i figure it can just be assumed that it has to do with resonance within the instrument. But yeah, the video is incomplete, you're right.
@@EvE-zenbymr I'm honestly curious, do you know how that resonance works? I mean, if you'd play the two sine waves into the saxophone, there still wouldn't be a product tone, since there's no sine component with that frequency. Something has to be happening at the reed to actually get that tone, right?
@@felixmandelbart Honestly, no, i don't know, or at least don't have a complete understanding. According to some other comments under this video, it's known to be possible to do this on a flute as well, so it can't be the reed. It's probably the same physical mechanics that cause a standing wave to form in the instrument in the first place. I'm honestly just hoping a person with actual experience in acoustics sees this and expands upon it. I'm not a capital-s Scientist, but to whatever degree i'm a lowercase one, my goal is just for other more able people to get their hands on what i'm able to contribute.
An interesting (accidental) revelation I had was that If I played a perfect 5th but had a shoe box on top of the speakers for my keyboard, I could hear that sub-harmonic product. I couldn't hear it normally with nothing on the speaker, but the shoe box acted as some sort of catalyst for me to hear that product. My theory is that those sub-harmonics exist naturally, but our brains just tune them out because they interfere with our audio perception (as a musician I use tuning apps and often times the most prominent frequencies on spectrograms are extremely low). Only when the object that's vibrating isn't *just* the air (in my case the shoe box being vibrated by the speaker, in this case the instrument internally resonating and then being projected) do we hear the produced lower frequency, because our brains are being tricked into thinking that the sound is actually being produced by the object instead of just being natural interference.
@@nxyuu Ohh, that's interesting, it's kind of similar to something I saw in an Adam Neely video once, where you touch a piece of paper to a ringing tuning fork and hear the octave below. His explanation was that the paper bounces of the tuning fork, which is moving back and forth very slightly, and by the time it sinks back, the tuning fork has gone through almost two oscillations, so the paper only gets hit by every second oscillation, hence at half the frequency. That probably applies to your cardboard box as well, maybe it only bounced of the highest peaks of the waveform, which occur with the subharmonic frequency. I'm pretty sure though that the bouncing cardboard box adds the subharmonic, rather than our ears filtering it out - the subharmonic sine wave just doesn't exist in the superposition of two sine waves.
As someone who does high school jazz I’ve never heard the word growling used to describe this, usually I hear this described as multiphonics and growling to describe physically growling with your uvula or tongue while playing.
Hmm, fair. I might be using the word wrong. However i've seen "multiphonics" used to refer to various things including alternate voicing or fingerings, as well as this.
@@EvE-zenbymr egan is right. Multiphonics also refers to using an alternate fingering to divide a woodwind into multiple independently resonating parts, to buzzing the upper and lower lip at different speeds on a brass instrument to create simple chords, to using the chamber of the mouth to amplify and manipulate overtones, and many other techniques. It is an umbrella term that encompasses many different extended techniques.
![Twenty One Pilots - “The Line” (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/E2Rj2gQAyPA/mqdefault.jpg)
Thank you for the pointer to Chris Stetson! I am blown. away. by _When we were that which wept for the sea_
That guys circular breathing is insaaaane.
I already loved Colin Stetson, but I had no clue that the singing at sax we’re AT THE SAME TIME… now I need to re-listen to his discog
Unlike with whistling, it seems that the reed actually blocks the vocal component while it is closed, resulting in true heterodyning of frequencies, something you do not get in other instruments. The result is that you get not only the original tones but also the sum and difference frequencies. Not having a woodwind I cannot investigate this.
Good point, i might want to look into that.
@@EvE-zenbymryeah like wait you basically just showed that combining two pure tones makes a superposition which contains both tones in a single waveform. Basic audio sense. But there’s obviously a ton more complicated stuff with how your vocal cords’ ability to output clean sound is manipulated by the opening and closing of the reed.
Also, I suspect that most of the distortion simply comes from having two different sounds trying to resonate in the same chamber. Only one tone and its harmonics can resonate in the tube at a time so maybe them “fighting each other” is causing the distortion.
I can confirm that it’s not just the reed, because growling or singing while playing is totally a real thing on flutes and other free reeds. Vocal folds are not being externally manipulated in those cases. I can also attest to this because I can feel extra vibrations in my throat and weird back pressure feeling when trying to sing while play a reed instrument. And a lot of the time it’s really hard to even sing a note while your mouth is closed on the reed and blowing.
@@Jwellsuhhuh Yeah, i can't really contest what you're saying. I kinda just got lost in the weeds, and forgot to really tie it up with this particular point both in my own head and in the video.
@@Jwellsuhhuh There's probably a lot going on with the technology Coling Stetson is using. I wonder how much the sax interferes with the throat's resonance and gets picked up by the throat mic. also, slight harmonic distortion from the amplifier circuits will probably exaggerate the 'difference tones' because the tops and bottoms of the soundwave are sliced off (that's why 'power chords' on the electric guitar sound so gutsy. Perfect 5ths played with distortion bring out that difference tone - partly because distortion also flattens out the difference in amplitude between the louder and quieter components of the sound. I'm describing more deliberate distortion, whereas colin doesn't seem to be using it explicitly in these examples, so it may only be a subtle effect, if it's there at all.
I could be wrong, but as a saxophone player, I believe most of the sounds are coming from multiphonics (using unique key combinations to create gritty chords), which usually have a growling aspect to them, rather than just growls themselves. Great video still, you made me find out about an amazing artist, but you may have gotten that wrong.
This video is gonna blow up
yeah, it seems so, and honestly i'm a little nervous lmao. i've just been watching the notifications slowly tick up and checking the view count. all i can hope for is that any accuracies in the video get corrected by wiser people, and/or that whatever useful info i've said gets used elsewhere.
Got this in my feed, it's happening man.
Interesting seeing this as a violinist. We don't have growls obviously, but we do have Tartini tones which seem to work quite similarly to what you're describing. Also Colin Stetson is awesome
I thought the contrabass clarinet was a double bass for a second when he showed the transcription with the sung undertones.
You as string family, have more pressure of the bow to create a similar effect, going all the way up to the scratching, and is obviusly notated very differently
As someone who plays a lot with guitar distortion pedals and with synthesizers, as soon as you started talking about singing a melody into the mouthpiece, I generally understood what was going on. Manipulating generated harmonics similar to this is a common thing in electronic instruments like that.
We, string players can experiment this phenomenon with the resulting sound of a double stop. For example if we listen carefully, playing D open string and B on the A string (a major sixth interval, but the B has to be a bit flat, so that we get into just intonation system rather than 12-TET) we can hear a G (one octave lower than G open string). In the harmonic series of this resulting G we can find those D and B in their third and fifth harmonic, respectively.
It is so cool, even the tuner catches it. My teacher used to say that discovering this in his Baroque studies made him play with a richer and more birilliant sound, since you are using the natural overtones and undertones of the instrument and the frequencies of the strings you are not playing in your favour. Playing Bach with this mindset, for example, the Prelude of the E major violin Partita, is mind blowing and a game changer.
It is besutiful to play and diacover this things and experiment.
This is the best way anyone has ever explained this phenomenon to me. Thank you so much!
playing a saxophone like a digeridoo, dang
you should probably look into digeridoo playing in case it has any insights, but i have no clue if theres any relation
I love doing this with my bass clarinet (which matches my vocal range, so it gets even more fun), and I've noticed that the interesting stuff happens when I try to approach simple intervals. interestingly, when I try to go for a unison or octave, I have to push harder and the sound chokes itself periodically, depending on how close I've come to the note
Interesting. I've done this while whistling, but never knew it had a name.
Never knew it was possible with whistling before thank you
Glad to know I'm not the only one who discovered this technique!
This explanation makes sense with pure vocals as well! Subharmonics and vocal fry are one in the same, and this is a great explanation of how connected they are. Similarly, I love music that messes with sound on a more “fundamental” level, so the precise manipulation of harmonic frequencies in live performance are astounding to me
isn't it the interference pattern? like the way that if you play two clean tones at the same time but one is slightly higher than the other you'll hear a slow volume oscillation because of the interference, and if the difference is big enough it'll create a tone? when i play a perfect 4th on the guitar (esp distorted) i can often hear the lower note a 5th below the bottom of the 4th (i think for a similar reason?)
oh i see yes you reached a similar point in the video i hadnt watched all the way!
Great video and clear explanation of the concepts! I’m definitely going to send this to other composers and performers as a resource. Two quick notes or add ons. The “official” name of the technique is generally vocalization or singing while playing when doing things like Colin Stetson. Generally growling is more often referred to when, like you mentioned, the resultant pitches are less determinate.
Also, I don’t think you necessarily mentioned it in your video, but a really cool effect you can pull off is getting a resultant pitch lower than the lowest note of the instrument. Colin Stetson uses this in some of his music and I did in my newest piece but if you drone a note and sing a 5th above, you’ll get an octave below the played pitch, same with a 4th (5th below played).
Also thanks for mentioning the harmonic series, that’s the only way this stuff works is with just intonation so it’s great you focused so much on the ratios!
Carl Maria von Weber wrote some chords to be produced by singing while playing the horn in his Concertino for Horn and Orchestra. Listen at 11:30 to about 12:15 in this video: ruclips.net/video/31BM9DlIbIU/видео.htmlsi=kxVVGwgFV7sKbLU5
This is also a common technique used by didgeridoo players, with very similar results.
This video is very well made, hope you grow more in the future and produce more videos!
Reminds me of David Larson and Derek Brown, but with more explaination for the growl rather than just the subharmonic
Yo. Thank you for this comment. I've been doing subharmonic singing to a limited degree for a while now, and i've never been able to find anyone attesting to second subharmonic singing, but ruclips.net/video/7PddsnKsUEg/видео.html here he is demonstrating it.
@@EvE-zenbymr ruclips.net/video/9VI026eWiW4/видео.html also contains a brief section on 2nd and beyond
@4Fluffin I'm probably going to make a followup video with info that i've newly come across. Would you like to be thanked in it?
@@EvE-zenbymr I guess, all I really did was point you toward more resources
so incredibly interesting, thank you very for this great and informative video!!!!
So if I understood that correctly it is basically physical fm (frequency modulation)? fm being the technique which is also used to create dubstep growls
Yeah actually, basically.
3:20 i think it's worth mentioning this is a 12 TET approximation of the harmonic series, and not actually itself. but i would agree that would open up a can of worms that perhaps wouldn't be to the point of the video.
(funnily enough, earlier today i responded to a fresh reply to my 3 year old comment i made on some video, about the exact same thing.)
Yeah, whole can o worms there. It *is* why i put in that little "but this is usually not of practical interest to a performer" line during the explanation, though i'm not sure how much that actually communicated that.
I'm working on digital synthesizers for EWI and one of my points is to add some vocalizing effects to it. I'm happy that I've procrastinated all the way, until somebody else done usefull material on a subject! Thanks, man. And thanks to the algorithm that showed me this video.
it may be easier to understand this in terms of sum/difference tones
that was very interesting thank u
At 2:23, where you have notated the 4th note in the lower voice as an X, actually I hear a destinct C#. Together with the G in the other voice this creates the dominant tritone. I also hear the next note as an A not a D. Anyone else?
Ah, a fellow perfect pitch haver. Yeah, i hear the C# too, but tbh i just can't explain it. The A in the next note is probably an overtone? I hear a D, and that combination of pitches has already occurred in the song when you hear it.
Nice! Thanks for sharing and also shout out to "Adult Swim", I noticed their logo in the clips, haven't seen this particular clip on broadcast but imagine maybe on their social media or RUclips? if people are not familiar with that cartoon Network programming it's really worth checking out some very avant guarde stuff going on there, for instance "off the air"for one, this is something I would not be surprised to hear as music used in some of the pieces on that series.
The clip where the Adult Swim logo is visible is the recording of Between Water And Wind, which is the fourth video listed in the description. It's a video of a performance from the channel's virtual music festival (Adult Swim Festival) in 2020. Stetson's full set was previously visible on Adult Swim's own channel, but they took it down at a later date for unknown reasons (probably just to reduce the number of videos on their channel, or something). The full performance is now available on Stetson's own channel, which is where the description links to.
@@EvE-zenbymr great! Thanks so much for that! And yes they have so much interesting content they just probably had to open some space up there. I'm definitely subscribing to Stetson's channel right now! And I'll look for that adult swim festival as well, sounds very interesting! Thanks again!
Nice! I'm super into the "harmonic series", would really like to know how it was originated, not just how it was named and observed but physicist don't seem to have that answer so far. (And I'm not talking about religion here, I am looking for a scientific answer.)
There are rhythms embedded in the harmonies and vice versa and many of these rhythms are quite elemental like the two in three rhythms. I find it delightful and not all that surprising that even some most basic nerve impulses is depend on a two-by-three Ion exchange, the "sodium potassium pump", and that if you speed up that rhythmic relationship enough it becomes the perfect fifth which is the strongest in the harmonic series after the octave. From where did these relationships originate? The big bang? It's a good guess as far as I'm concerned.
Guy's strong law of small numbers: there aren't enough small numbers to meet the many demands made of them. Basically, small numbers are inevitably gonna appear a lot, so there's gonna be a lot of coincidences like this. It probably doesn't mean anything in particular.
@@EvE-zenbymr i'll have to look up that even though I'm not strong in my math I have some intuition in these things. For instance look at the proton/neutron one-to 0 ratio in hydrogen and then in helium I believe it's a two to two, those were the first elements to form in the universe along with a small amount of lithium which has 3 protons, so it seems that as numbers were able to build up and kind of "dance" (as neutrons "dance" with protons) in that way might be a clue as to the origins of some of this stuff.
@@TiqueO6 I've investigated the origins of stuff like this before. It never led me anywhere. I've come to believe that numbers are just numbers.
@@EvE-zenbymr yes I think when we get into the "infinite" or or the "it just is" area that's just because we haven't yet gotten enough information. someday I think there will be more data as it seems to be the case in most of the sciences over the years. However we can come to observing the first moments will depend on technology advancing I think we've gotten smaller than femtoseconds but a lot happened in those first moments and people are stretching to try to see what happened will probably find our answers there but for the meantime we can just enjoy music and being musicians which is probably one of the best ways to experience this kind of thing including Dance.
I feel like the explanation of why we hear a lower product frequency is wrong, or at least incomplete: You don't just hear the "frequency" of the product wave, since it's not a sine wave - you only hear the frequencies of the sine waves that it's composed of. Just try playing A3 = 220Hz and C#4 = 550Hz on a piano or using a sine wave generator, you won't hear A2 = 110Hz, even though that's exactly the example around 6:56. There has to be more going with the singing and instrument interacting.
Yeah, i sorta left out the precise mechanical explanation of how it happens inside the instrument. Partly because i didn't fully synthesize all of that info, and also partly because i figure it can just be assumed that it has to do with resonance within the instrument. But yeah, the video is incomplete, you're right.
@@EvE-zenbymr I'm honestly curious, do you know how that resonance works? I mean, if you'd play the two sine waves into the saxophone, there still wouldn't be a product tone, since there's no sine component with that frequency. Something has to be happening at the reed to actually get that tone, right?
@@felixmandelbart Honestly, no, i don't know, or at least don't have a complete understanding. According to some other comments under this video, it's known to be possible to do this on a flute as well, so it can't be the reed. It's probably the same physical mechanics that cause a standing wave to form in the instrument in the first place. I'm honestly just hoping a person with actual experience in acoustics sees this and expands upon it. I'm not a capital-s Scientist, but to whatever degree i'm a lowercase one, my goal is just for other more able people to get their hands on what i'm able to contribute.
An interesting (accidental) revelation I had was that If I played a perfect 5th but had a shoe box on top of the speakers for my keyboard, I could hear that sub-harmonic product. I couldn't hear it normally with nothing on the speaker, but the shoe box acted as some sort of catalyst for me to hear that product. My theory is that those sub-harmonics exist naturally, but our brains just tune them out because they interfere with our audio perception (as a musician I use tuning apps and often times the most prominent frequencies on spectrograms are extremely low). Only when the object that's vibrating isn't *just* the air (in my case the shoe box being vibrated by the speaker, in this case the instrument internally resonating and then being projected) do we hear the produced lower frequency, because our brains are being tricked into thinking that the sound is actually being produced by the object instead of just being natural interference.
@@nxyuu Ohh, that's interesting, it's kind of similar to something I saw in an Adam Neely video once, where you touch a piece of paper to a ringing tuning fork and hear the octave below. His explanation was that the paper bounces of the tuning fork, which is moving back and forth very slightly, and by the time it sinks back, the tuning fork has gone through almost two oscillations, so the paper only gets hit by every second oscillation, hence at half the frequency. That probably applies to your cardboard box as well, maybe it only bounced of the highest peaks of the waveform, which occur with the subharmonic frequency. I'm pretty sure though that the bouncing cardboard box adds the subharmonic, rather than our ears filtering it out - the subharmonic sine wave just doesn't exist in the superposition of two sine waves.
As someone who does high school jazz I’ve never heard the word growling used to describe this, usually I hear this described as multiphonics and growling to describe physically growling with your uvula or tongue while playing.
Hmm, fair. I might be using the word wrong. However i've seen "multiphonics" used to refer to various things including alternate voicing or fingerings, as well as this.
@@EvE-zenbymr egan is right. Multiphonics also refers to using an alternate fingering to divide a woodwind into multiple independently resonating parts, to buzzing the upper and lower lip at different speeds on a brass instrument to create simple chords, to using the chamber of the mouth to amplify and manipulate overtones, and many other techniques. It is an umbrella term that encompasses many different extended techniques.