A violin can produce ‘combination notes’
Getty Images/Thomas Berwick
Musical sounds that were thought to be audible only in the head as a habit of the ear canal are actually real. Violins can produce these unique sounds, and higher quality violins can produce stronger sounds.
In 1714, the Italian violinist Giuseppe Tartini discovered that when he played two notes simultaneously, he could unexpectedly hear a third note. It was later named a combination tone because it is a blend of tonal frequencies. These tones were thought to originate entirely in our ears, as they are amplified by the cochlea rather than actually emitted by an instrument.
Giovanni Cecchi At the University of Florence, Italy, he and his colleagues decided to investigate how different violins produce combination tones.
They used a computer to analyze recordings of professional violinists performing selected note pairs on five violins of different ages and qualities. Inspired by the ideas of the 19th-century physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, who showed that some instruments alone might be capable of producing combination tones, they divided the sound waves produced by the violin into parts of different frequencies. Disassembled. The team found that all violins produced combination tones, but the oldest instruments produced the strongest. The most prominent combination tones of the oldest violin made in Bologna in 1700 were about 75% louder than those of modern mass-produced instruments.
The researchers also wanted to know how clearly the listener could hear the combination tones produced by three top-quality violins. They invited a group of 11 professional and amateur musicians to listen to the violinist’s recording. Listeners could hear the difference almost every time.The least accurate listeners heard it 93% of the time, while the most accurate listeners heard it every time.
Jim Woodhouse The Cambridge University professor says the experiment suggests that combination tones arise from the way the air vibrates and mixes inside the violin. When playing a violin, it is not only the strings that determine the tone, but also the shape of the violin, which is more precisely constructed with high-quality instruments. “It’s not difficult to find quality modern violins that exhibit this effect as strongly,” he says.
The team now wants to study more violins to pinpoint exactly which part of the instrument is responsible for the combination tones.
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