Question

What are the characteristics of musical sounds?

Answer 1

1. Musical sounds have three main characteristics: pitch, loudness or intensity, and quality or timbre.
2. Frequency determines the shrillness of the sound which is known as pitch.
3. High-frequency sound means high pitched sound and low-frequency sound means low pitched sound.
4. Amplitude determines the loudness of the sound.
5. Amplitude can be measured as the height of crest or depth of trough in the wave representation of sound.
6. High amplitude corresponds to a louder sound and low amplitude corresponds to a soft sound.
7. Two sounds can be different even when their pitch and loudness are the same.
8. Quality or timbre is responsible for this difference.
9. A sound is produced by the combinations of fundamental frequency and its harmonics.
10. Lowest frequency is known as the fundamental frequency.
11. All other frequencies higher than the fundamental frequency are called overtones.
12. The quality or timbre of a sound is dependent on the number of overtones present with the fundamental frequency.