Wim, ". . .A man in the chorus in which I sing told me that humans cannot hear a pitch that low . . ." There is a difference between hearing a Pitch and hearing a sound. Generally speaking, our ears and brains can sense vibrations as pitch down to around 20hz. Below that, it sounds like a vibration, pulse, beat, rattle, something like that. The sound loses coherence, and our brains divide the pulses into individual noises rather than one sound identifiable as a tone. When you hear 7 beats a second in tuning a temperament, it sounds like beats. If you keep going up with thirds into the treble, the very fast beats can start to sound like a pitch or low tone. This is referred to a resultant tone, and is the same affect that pipe organ makers use to create the lowest octave (usually down to 16Hz C). The church I used to attend in San Diego had an excellent organ, and you could hear and feel the low 16 Hz C very strongly, and somehow it seemed in tune with the upper partials, reinforcing the sound without actually sounding like a pitch. Here's an interesting little tidbit: A normal resting heartbeat of 60 beats per minute would be a 'C' pitch! OK, OK, I know - a change of just 5 beats per minute throws the pitch way off. And if we want to take inharmonicity into effect and match the stretch of a piano tuning, our heartbeat should really be closer to 55 bpm :-) Merry Christmas Don Mannino _____ From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of wimblees at aol.com Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 5:35 PM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: [CAUT] fundamental vs partials, was. Re: lowest note on Imp. Bosey Nominally it would be about 16Hz. Take C5, which is about 513 if memory serves, and divide by 2 5 times in succession. A0 is nominally 27.5 Hz (440 divided by 2 4 times). Once you get down that low, it is more of a "beat" than a pitch. And not much fundamental is produced. It's the partials you actually hear. Regards, Fred Sturm It's interesting that you mention the fundamental not being "heard". A man in the chorus in which I sing told me that humans cannot hear a pitch that low, but that we only hear the partials. When I tuned one once, I remember hearing the actual vibrations of the strings, which to me sounds like a B19 Bomber, but I can't remember if I was actually hearing the fundamental, or just the overtones. Wim -----Original Message----- From: Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu> To: caut at ptg.org Sent: Mon, Dec 14, 2009 7:37 am Subject: Re: [CAUT] lowest note on Imp. Bosey Nominally it would be about 16Hz. Take C5, which is about 513 if memory serves, and divide by 2 5 times in succession. A0 is nominally 27.5 Hz (440 divided by 2 4 times). Once you get down that low, it is more of a "beat" than a pitch. And not much fundamental is produced. It's the partials you actually hear. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu On Dec 14, 2009, at 1:40 AM, Wimblees at aol.com wrote: Does anyone know what the lowest note on the Imperial Bosey is, and how many beats per seconds it vibrates? Willem (Wim) Blees, RPT Piano Tuner/Technician 94-505 Kealakaa Str. Mililani, Oahu, HI 96789 808-349-2943 www.Bleespiano.com <http://www.bleespiano.com/> Author of: The Business of Piano Tuning available from Potter Press www.pianotuning.com <http://www.pianotuning.com/> = -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091215/e35b8df6/attachment-0001.htm>
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