This week I attended a lecture from one of my favorite artists, Jacob Collier, who told the audience “you can learn everything there is to learn in life from music.” Bold claim. But as he went on to explain: physics, math, design, language, geography, politics, emotions, relationships—they all come in to play in one way or another.
How instruments make sound is rooted in physics. Whether it’s the lips of a brass player or the strings of a violin, little, measured vibrations make the sound waves we hear as music. Look at this violin string in slow-motion to see how it works.
The violin’s A string is given the name A440 because the string makes 440 little waves per second. If the waves move slower, the sound goes lower, so while the double bass has an A string too, it’s only A55.
Want to go one level deeper? Interestingly, if the wave count doubles (or halves), it equals one octave. 55 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 440 so the violin is 3 octaves above the bass. Now we can add math to the lessons learned from music! 😊 If you want to go deeper into waves and resonance check this out and try to explain it to me!
So if you want to play higher, why not just move your bow faster to make the string vibrate faster? Thankfully it doesn’t work that way, because if it did, every time the music got faster, the pitch would change wildly. A string’s pitch is determined by two things: tension and length. Tighter and shorter is higher. Looser and longer is lower. So, you can’t move a cello bow fast enough to make it sound like a violin, but you can make the string shorter, in a way, by pushing down the string with your finger at higher and higher points up the finger board. You could also try to make the string super tight, but it would probably snap or the pressure it’s creating would crack your instrument before you got there…
Here’s a bit more from this week…
Audience insight: A new study shows that audience member’s pulse, excitement level and breathing sync up during concerts. Live music is a shared experience on many levels.
New Artist: Genre-defying cellist, Abel Selaocoe, is blending African and Western European traditions to broaden both the scope and audience of classical music. Pretty cool stuff.
Mozart: Did you know that it 2016, Mozart beat artists like Beyonce and Taylor swift to snag the top spot for CD’s sales? There’s a bit more to the story, but it involves a 200-disk anniversary edition of his collected works...