The Harmonic Series | Illustrated Theory of Music #8

The harmonic series! What is the harmonic  series? Well, it's what happens when you   cram more and more sound  waves into the same space,   like this. The space could be a violin  string or guitar string or an air column   like an organ pipe and here you see one two  three four up to ten waves in the space.   Why is this important? Well, for one thing, we  hear these notes all the time every time you hear   an instrument play a note you're hearing all the  notes of the harmonic series above the main note   and the strength of the different harmonics gives  you the characteristic sound of that instrument   but I'm also going to show you that the harmonic  series is the basis of all western harmony   and to do that I'm going to need a  harmonic series generating device   I've got one here it's called a natural horn and  using my lips I can play the whole harmonic series let's take those notes a bit slower so you  can only have whole numbers of waves in the   horn not halves or any other fraction and  we're going to take each number of waves   individually let's start with one actually let's  not start with one it's too low for me to play   so let's start with two and it sounds like this that's a c a low c   I'm going to leave out three waves and go straight  on to four you'll see why this is four waves   that's another c an octave higher than the  first I'm going to double again to eight   and 16. so they're all the note c in different octaves and  doubling the number of waves puts you up an octave there are more c's than any other note on the  horn so we call that the key of the instrument   it's a horn in c. c is called the fundamental   you could also call it the tonic because  it fixes the key we're playing in there's   lots of music from around the world that uses  a long note on the tonic a drone to fix the key so you can only have a whole number of waves  in the horn we've talked about one two and four   they're all the note c what about  three well I can play that two it's a g if I alternate between two three and  four waves in the horn I get this so using the second third and fourth harmonics you  get c's and g's which fixes you even more in the   key of c and there's lots of music that uses a c  g drone or the first and fifth notes of the scale   tonic and dominant if you want to be technical. so the first few notes of the harmonic series  give you c's and g's and fix you in a key   but this is where it gets exciting  sensual scandalous what happens if you put   five waves in the horn I'm gonna play  harmonics two three four and five yes it's the third of the chord listen to how  nice that sounds the cg fifth sounds solid   it's called the power chord in rock music but bear  the third gives you charm sensuousness sweetness   so much so it was considered vulgar at first and  more it's the major third the fifth harmonic makes   the music major the cg fifth is ambiguous  and still more the third gives you all of   harmony from the early renaissance to rock and  roll when we say a c chord we mean c e and g   the third gives us the chords we need for  cadences chord sequences and long-term structure All that from the first five notes  of the harmonic series c c g c   e okay let's see what we have we've had the  fifth harmonic that beautiful major third   six is double three so it's an octave above  that first g what about seven the seventh   harmonic is great it's even cool the seventh  harmonic gives you the seventh of the chord   he thinks he's clever but  that's just the fourth fifth   sixth and seventh notes of the harmonic series but we've got even more spicy seventh  chords jazz will be nowhere without them   this is all going so well the eighth  harmonic of course is another c the ninth   wonderfully is a d you see how the notes  get closer together the higher you go   the tenth is another e, of course,  double five so 8 9 10 sounds like this,   at last, we've got a scale eleven ah that sounds horrible it's a nowhere note  somewhere between f and f sharp 13 is even worse what's gone wrong all those beautiful intervals  from stuffing 2 3 4 up to 10 waves in a tube why   not 11 and 13. there are two stories here one  theoretical and one practical the theoretical   one is that actually some of our intervals have  been getting more and more out of tune compared   with the piano keyboard our lovely whole numbers  of waves sound so satisfying at least up to 10.   on a piano keyboard you have to stretch some  intervals and squash some others they're all   out of tune but useful our lovely major  third five waves in the horn on the piano   is equivalent to 5.03968 waves, not  a big difference but you can hear it   the practical story is how as a horn  player do we deal with these 11th and   13th harmonics composers write them one  way is to live with them they sound quaint the other way is to put your hand into the bell of  the horn and wiggle it around to put them in tune let's just finish the harmonic series up to 16  which is as high as we normally go on the horn   14 is double seven so it's an octave above that  really cool b flat we had 15 is a dead in tune   b natural and 16, of course, brings us back to c and here's the whole thing I hope I've shown you that the harmonic series  is important because it occurs naturally in an   air column like a horn but also on strings and  because it gives you all the intervals that occur   in western music by the way I've been showing  the sound waves as if they go side to side like a   violin string but they don't they go backwards and  forwards like a slinky they're longitudinal waves   but the maths and the music are the same and another thing I've been playing a  horn in c so you get a c harmonic series you get a c harmonic series because the  horn is 5.2748 meters long which is exactly   the right length to get one sound wave of  the note c in but if I change the length   I could play a harmonic series in d or e flat etc

Channel: Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Views: 52,122

Keywords: orchestra age enlightenment, oae, period instruments, harmonic, music theory, guide, tuning, harmony, grade 5, octaves for beginners, what is harmony, beginners guide, basic music theory, rough guide, sound waves, easy, sound science, illustrated music theory, animated music theory, tonic, Martin Lawrence, Jo Lawrence, Natural Horn, western harmony, basic principals of music

Id: Qzvp4_igvyw

Length: 12min 33sec (753 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 17 2020