Inharmonicity - Wikipedia

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inharmonicity

Inharmonicity
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In music, inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies

of overtones (also known as partials or partial tones) depart
from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency (harmonic
series).
Acoustically, a note perceived to have a single distinct pitch in
fact contains a variety of additional overtones. Many percussion
instruments, such as cymbals, tam-tams, and chimes, create
complex and inharmonic sounds.
However, in stringed instruments such as the piano, violin, and
guitar, or in some Indian drums such as tabla,[1] the overtones
are close toor in some cases, quite exactlywhole number
multiples of the fundamental frequency. Any departure from
this ideal harmonic series is known as inharmonicity. The less
elastic the strings are (that is, the shorter, thicker, smaller
tension or stiffer they are), the more inharmonicity they exhibit.

Harmonic spectrum.

Inharmonic spectrum of a bell

(dashed gray lines indicate
harmonics).

Music harmony and intonation depends strongly on the harmonicity of tones.

An ideal, homogeneous, infinitesimally thin or infinitely flexible string or
column of air has exactly harmonic modes of vibration.[2] In any real musical
instrument, the resonant body that produces the music tonetypically a
string, wire, or column of airdeviates from this ideal and has some small or
large amount of inharmonicity. For instance, a very thick string behaves less
as an ideal string and more like a cylinder (a tube of mass), which has natural
resonances that are not whole number multiples of the fundamental
frequency.
When a string is bowed or tone in a wind instrument initiated by vibrating
reed or lips, a phenomenon called mode-locking counteracts the natural
inharmonicity of the string or air column and causes the overtones to lock
precisely onto integer multiples of the fundamental pitch, even though these
are slightly different from the natural resonance points of the instrument. For
this reason, a single tone played by a bowed string instrument, brass
instrument, or reed instrument does not necessarily exhibit inharmonicity.[2]
However, when a string is struck or plucked, as with a piano string that is
struck by a hammer, a violin string played pizzicato, or a guitar string that is
plucked by a finger or plectrum, the string will exhibit inharmonicity. The
inharmonicity of a string depends on its physical characteristics, such as

Percussion bars,
such as
xylophone, are
hung at 2/9 and
7/9 length, and
struck at 1/2
length, to reduce
inharmonicity.

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tension, stiffness, and length. For instance, a stiff string under low tension (such as those found in
the bass notes of small upright pianos) exhibits a high degree of inharmonicity, while a thinner
string under higher tension (such as a treble string in a piano) or a more flexible string (such as a
gut or nylon string used on a guitar or harp) will exhibit less inharmonicity. A wound string
generally exhibits less inharmonicity than the equivalent solid string, and for that reason wound
strings are often preferred.

Contents
1 Pianos
1.1 Sound quality of inharmonicity
1.2 Inharmonicity leads to stretched tuning
2 Guitar
3 Mode-locking
4 List of instruments
5 See also
6 Further reading
7 References
8 External links

Pianos
Sound quality of inharmonicity
In 1943, Schuck and Young were the first scientists to measure the spectral inharmonicity in piano
tones. They found that the spectral partials in piano tones are progressively stretchedthat is to
say, the lowest partials are stretched the least and higher partials are progressively stretched further.
Inharmonicity is not necessarily unpleasant. In 1962, research by Harvey Fletcher and his
collaborators indicated that the spectral inharmonicity is important for tones to sound piano-like.
They proposed that inharmonicity is responsible for the "warmth" property common to real piano
tones.[3] According to their research synthesized piano tones sounded more natural when some
inharmonicity was introduced.[4] In general, electronic instruments that duplicate acoustic
instruments must duplicate both the inharmonicity and the resulting stretched tuning of the original
instruments.

Inharmonicity leads to stretched tuning

When pianos are tuned by piano tuners, the technician sometimes listens for the sound of "beating"
when two notes are played together, and tunes to the point that minimizes roughness between tones.

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Piano tuners must deal with the inharmonicity of piano strings, which is present in different
amounts in all of the ranges of the instrument, but especially in the bass and high treble registers.
The result is that octaves are tuned slightly wider than the harmonic 2:1 ratio. The exact amount
octaves are stretched in a piano tuning varies from piano to piano and even from register to register
within a single pianodepending on the exact inharmonicity of the strings involved.
Because of the problem of inharmonicity, electronic piano tuning devices used by piano technicians
are not designed to tune according to a simple harmonic series. Rather, the devices use various
means to duplicate the stretched octaves and other adjustments a technician makes by ear. The most
sophisticated devices allow a technician to make custom inharmonicity measurements
simultaneously considering all partials for pitch and volume to determine the most appropriate
stretch to employ for a given instrument. Some include an option to simply record a tuning that a
technician has completed by ear; the technician can then duplicate that tuning on the same piano (or
others of similar make and model) more easily and quickly.
The issues surrounding setting the stretch by ear vs machine have not been settled; machines are
better at deriving the absolute placement of semitones within a given chromatic scale, whereas
non-machine tuners prefer to adjust these locations preferentially due to their temptation to make
intervals more sonorous. The result is that pianos tuned by ear and immediately checked with a
machine tend to vary from one degree to another from the purely theoretical semitone
(mathematically the 12th root of two) due to human error and perception. (If pleasing the ear is the
goal of an aural tuning, then pleasing the math is the goal of a machine tuning.) This is thought to
be because strings can vary somewhat from note to note and even from neighbors within a unison.
This non-linearity is different from true falseness where a string creates false harmonics and is
more akin to minor variations in string thickness, string sounding length or minor bridge
inconsistencies.
Piano tuning is a compromiseboth in terms of choosing a temperament to minimize out-oftuneness in the intervals and chords that will be played, and in terms of dealing with inharmonicity.
For more information, see Piano acoustics and Piano tuning.
Another factor that can cause problems is the presence of rust on the strings or dirt in the
windings.[5] These factors can slightly raise the frequency of the higher modes, resulting in more
inharmonicity.

Guitar
While piano tuning is normally done by trained technicians, guitars such as acoustic guitars,
electric guitars, and electric bass guitars are usually tuned by the guitarist themselves. When a
guitarist tunes a guitar by ear, they have to take both temperament and string inharmonicity into
account. The inharmonicity in guitar strings can "cause stopped notes to stop sharp, meaning they
will sound sharper both in terms of pitch and beating, than they "should" do. This is distinct from
any temperament issue." Even if a guitar is built so that there are no "fret or neck angle errors,
inharmonicity can make the simple approach of tuning open strings to notes stopped on the fifth or

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fourth frets" unreliable. Inharmonicity also demands that some of the "octaves may need to be
compromised minutely." [6]
When strobe tuners became available in the 1970s, and then inexpensive electronic tuners in the
1980s reached the mass market, it did not spell the end of tuning problems for guitarists. Even if an
electronic tuner indicates that the guitar is "perfectly" in tune, some chords may not sound in tune
when they are strummed, either due to string inharmonicity from worn or dirty strings, a misplaced
fret, a mis-adjusted bridge, or other problems. Due to the range of factors in play, getting a guitar to
sound in tune is an exercise in compromise. "Worn or dirty strings are also inharmonic and harder
to tune", a problem that can be partially resolved by cleaning strings.[2]
Some performers choose to focus the tuning towards the key of the piece, so that the tonic and
dominant chords will have a clear, resonant sound. However, since this compromise may lead to
muddy-sounding chords in sections of a piece that stray from the main key (e.g., a bridge section
that modulates a semitone down), some performers choose to make a broader compromise, and
"split the difference" so that all chords will sound acceptable.

Mode-locking
Other stringed instruments such as the violin, viola, cello, and double bass also exhibit
inharmonicity when notes are plucked using the pizzicato technique. However, this inharmonicity
disappears when the strings are bowed, because the bow's stick-slip action is periodic,[7] so it drives
all of the resonances of the string at exactly harmonic ratios, even if it has to drive them slightly off
their natural frequency. As a result, the operating mode of a bowed string playing a steady note is a
compromise among the tunings of all of the (slightly inharmonic) string resonances, which is due to
the strong non-linearity of the stick-slip action.[2] Mode locking also occurs in the human voice and
in reed instruments such as the clarinet.[7]

List of instruments
Perfectly harmonic
Bowed string instruments[8] (violin, cello, erhu, ...)
Brass instruments (trumpet, horn, trombone, ...)
Reed aerophones (oboe, clarinet, ...)
Nearly harmonic
Plucked string instruments[8] (guitar, harpsichord, harp...)
Approximately harmonic
Tuned percussion[8]
Not harmonic

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Untuned percussion[8]

See also
Anharmonicity
Pseudo-octave
Subharmonic

Further reading
B. C. J. Moore, R.W. Peters, and B. C. Glasberg, Thresholds for the detection of
inharmonicity in complex tones, Journal of the Acoust. Soc. Am., vol. 77, no. 5,
pp. 18611867, 1985.
F. Scalcon, D. Rocchesso, and G. Borin, Subjective evaluation of the inharmonicity of
synthetic piano tones, in Proc. Int. Comp. Music Conf. ICMC98, pp. 5356, 1998.
A. Galembo and L. Cuddy, String inharmonicity and the timbral quality of piano bass tones:
Fletcher, Blackham, and Stratton (1962) revisited. Report to the 3rd US Conference on Music
Perception and Cognition, MIT, Cambridge, MA, July - August 1997.

References
1. The Indian Musical Drums by Sir C V Raman 1930 (http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/proca/1/179-188.pdf)
2. How harmonic are harmonics? by Joe Wolfe, accessed 29 June 2008 (http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au
/jw/harmonics.html)
3. Acoustical Society of America - Large grand and small upright pianos (http://www.acoustics.org/press
/134th/galembo.htm) by Alexander Galembo and Lola L. Cuddy]
4. Matti Karjalainen (1999). "Audibility of Inharmonicity in String Instrument Sounds, and Implications to
Digital Sound Systems" (https://www.researchgate.net/publication
/228587669_Audibility_of_inharmonicity_in_string_instrument_sounds_and_implications_to_digital_s
ound_synthesis)
5. Rowland, David (1998). The Cambridge companion to the piano (https://books.google.com
/books?id=kEy1MRsnVHIC&pg=PA106&lpg=PA106&dq=inharmonicity&source=web&
ots=1ERAuM9M-2&sig=rbIk1KfxFX21uMDLFzdhctwO6pYT), p.106. ISBN 0-521-47986-X.
6. How to tune the guitar expertly by ear. by Brian Capleton http://www.amarilli.co.uk/guitar/howto.asp
7. Neville H. Fletcher (1994). "Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos in Musical Instruments"
(http://www.complexity.org.au/ci/vol01/fletch01/html/). Complexity International.
8. http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/sound.spectrum.html

External links
"Pitch Paradoxical (http://www.ihear.com/Pitch/paradoxical.html)", iHear.com.

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