Sympathetic Vibratory Physics

Ramsay
"The modest statement that "one sound contains three different sounds" has been disputed on the ground that "a simple vibration is surely a most possible thing, and therefore also a simple sound." There are no simple effects in Nature. Gravity gradually retards a rising body, and accelerates a falling body; an inclined plane is a diminished falling body; a pendulum is an interrupted inclined plane; and a musical string vibrating is a double compound pendulum, having its center of oscillation and velocity acting spontaneously and simultaneously on each side of the center of gravity.
Another objection to a sound being made up of different sounds was that "these sounds would beget other sounds, and this would go on ad infinitum. Thus a musical note should consist at once of every possible sound; and yet we know that this would be a jarring noise." It did not occur to these objectors that as Nature mixes her chemical elements in very various proportions, and adapts them to our constitutions and our wants, she could likewise mix her musical elements in such proportion as not to offend our ears." [Scientific Basis and Build of Music, page 18]

dividing itself by 2 or 3 or 5, etc., up through the whole geometrical series of numbers, not keeping fixed at one thing; but while the whole length is vibrating the fundamental partial, it keeps shifting the still nodes along its length, and sometimes longer and sometimes shorter segments are sounding the other partials which clothe the chief sound. It has been commonly said that "a musical sound is composed of three sounds," for every ear is capable of hearing these three, and with a little attention a few more than these; but many will be startled when told that there are twenty-five sounds in that sound. Eighteen of them are simply the octaves of the other seven, all of these seven except one having one or more octaves in the sound. Four of the seven also are very feeble, the one which has no octave being the feeblest of all. Two of the other three are so distinctly audible along with the chief partial that they gave rise to the saying we have quoted about a musical sound being composed of three sounds.¹ If the three most pronounced partials were equally developed in one sound, it could not be called one sound - it would decidedly be a chord; and when in the system they do become developed, they form a chord; but in the one sound they, the partials, having fewer and fewer octaves to strengthen them, fade away in the perspective of sound. The sharp seventh, which in the developed system has only one place, not coming into existence until the sixth octave of the genesis, is by far the feeblest of all the partials, and Nature did well to appoint it so. These harmonics are also sometimes called "overtones," because they are higher than the fundamental one, which is the sound among the sounds, as the Bible is the book among books. [Scientific Basis and Build of Music, page 59]

Bridging Science and Spirituality

Search

one sound contains three different sounds