Yeah it literally just the waveform in physical form. I couldn’t think of a better way to visualize it.
Comment on Feeling that groove
Psythik@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Simple. Sounds are vibrations. The grooves make the needle vibrate. Those vibrations are amplified.
realitista@lemmus.org 3 days ago
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
Yeah the basic concept makes sense to me, but I’m still fascinated by the level of detail and instrumentation they can fit into those tiny grooves. It’s not like midi, like a piano roll, it is playing back shit that was recorded. It’s cool af.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 days ago
Certainly makes a lot more sense than a CD
docoptix@lemmy.world 3 days ago
and CDs are still extremely simple compared to a compression format like MP3
b34k@lemmy.world 3 days ago
And sound better, too!
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
How does it seem like multiple sounds come through at the same time though? Say drums and vocals and a guitar, all at once. How does one groove equate to all of that?
psycotica0@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
Highly basic answer, let’s say the strength of the vocals wave over time is:
5, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4
And drums is:
4, 0, 2, 0, 4, 0, 2, 3
Then you add them together for each time slice and get:
9, 4, 5, 2, 7, 4, 7, 7
And you put that on a record, or out to a speaker, and our ears are able to break that up into the two parts when it hears it. This is the same as when two things are in the room making sound, there may be two sources, but my ear only has one hole, and that hole has one eardrum behind it. The different sounds just add their powers together and hit my ear as one mixed wave.
Alternative answer: magic
gigachad@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Okay, I see this is very simplified, but an instrument consists of more than a strength? Given how many different instruments and voices exist - how many different individual waveforms exist? A flute should have another waveform than a saxophone and my voice is different to that one of your mother.
psycotica0@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Yeah! The “timbre” (which despite how it looks is said “tamber”) of an instrument is its audio “profile”. It’s what makes a piano different than a flute, or on a more subtle level makes one piano slightly different from another.
But here’s the nuts part: what makes up the timbre of an instrument is a bunch of different resonating bits all resonating together. Essentially the reason a flute sounds like a flute is because it comes “pre-loaded” with a boatload of simple waveforms already added together. When you play a note on one, you get the main pitch you’re playing, but the instrument’s body and your breath all also produce a whack-ton of side tones all playing at the same time. And like a fingerprint, our ear/brain hears all these bits start and stop together and says “that’s a flute”.
So it’s the same process, really: simple bits adding together. But “flute sound” isn’t the atom. It’s made up of a bunch of simple waves already added together, which then gets added to the other sounds that sound like pianos or guitars, which produces the final mix.
I don’t know if you’ll get anything out of it, but you could look up videos of a “modular synth” setting up a trumpet sound or something. These devices have simple electronic tone generators, but by layering them and plugging them into each other, and using effects and the like, they can start to mimic the timbre of a trumpet or whatever. By essentially adding together the “key bits” of the harmonics (these other waves) they can start to approach the feeling of a trumpet sound, but just with simple, raw, parts.
autriyo@feddit.org 3 days ago
In theory an infinite amount of different waveforms. But practically speaking, no one would be able to distinguish them by ear, and even oscilloscopes have limited resolution.
Music is super complex and can’t even be described by a single or a few waveforms, unless it’s very simple. Another simplified way to explain all the sounds of music fitting on one “waveform” is to imagine the high frequency stuff happening in between the low frequency stuff. And usually the different instruments and voices don’t happen all at once, they happen slightly one after another, or in sync but intentionally so they affect each other the “right” way. Whatever the “right” way is…
davidagain@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Definitely, but you only ever perceive all that because of the one-dimenaional way your eardrums vibrate, and they vibrate because the air next to them vibrates. If we make the air next to your eardrums vibrate in the same pattern they did when the band were performing, you will hear and perceive the same sound as the band made.
You should be aware that an amplified band is only ever making sound at you through a bunch of speakers whose only function is to vibrate air in a one dimensional pattern.
Separating that all out into different instruments and people and timbres etc is the clever bit, and your brain does that, not the speaker, and you largely learned it as a child.
olafurp@lemmy.world 3 days ago
That’s the neat part, the brain does that using some black magic. You just have to add all the sounds individual waves together and the brain deciphers it.
Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
Yeah, we just have two ear canals. Stereo is basically all your brain will get.
olafurp@lemmy.world 3 days ago
It’s true that the ears receive stereo input, but brain postprocesses it to make surround sound. It uses the time difference from sound hitting your right and left ear to do some black magic and figure out at which angle the sound is coming from.
SirHery@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Well if you put multiple waveforms above eachother the form on single waveform.(They all occupie the same space,in this case air, so they can’t be “separate”). This waveform is then recorded and remastered and whatnot. But basically the waves you can see on the vinyl are the “schape” they will have in the air.
Jerkface@lemmy.world 3 days ago
You can add the waveforms together mathematically. Like if you go into a graphing calculator and plot a sine at 220 hz that’s an A note. Then add two more at 261(ish) and 329, baby you got yourself an A minor cookin’. That’s also what the groove would look like.
ytg@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
264 and 330 (exactly) if you want to justly tune it
FishFace@piefed.social 3 days ago
Take it back. How does the vibrating air equate to all that? It’s not like there’s a drums bit of air and a vocals bit of air - the vibration is all smushed together. Your brain separates it back out again. That’s why it can take training to separately hear some bits of music, or why you can’t usually pick out individual voices in a choir.
ramenshaman@lemmy.world 3 days ago
That part still kinda mystifies me. I understand that it’s a single waveform and you can just add together all the different waveforms of each instrument but it still blows my mind. Kinda like I sort of understand magnets but it still seems like magic.
With vinyl records it’s pretty cool how it can do right and left channels. The right channel vibrates diagonally in one direction and the left channel vibrates diagonally in the other direction.
curiousaur@reddthat.com 2 days ago
Fourier transformation.
youtu.be/spUNpyF58BY
mika_mika@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It doesn’t do it particularly well and that’s how you know vinyl enthusiasts are smelling their own farts.