Acoustics Part I: an Introduction to Resonance
Galileo discovered the principles of resonance when experimenting with pendulums
Way back in the old days of the 17th century, a man named Galileo Galilei was fiddling around with a pendulum and discovered that if he gave the weight at the end of the string a tiny push at the right time, it would keep swaying back and forth with minimal energy exertion. He discovered that potential and kinetic energy can be set into motion with just a tiny bit of effort. This phenomenon is what became known as resonance. As it turns out, it’s not just pendulums that resonance is affecting. It’s everything. You could say that everything resonates. This affects us musicians and producers in many ways. For example, your room may have too many resonances in the wrong places, which will mess up audio recordings unless you dampen the sound vibrations with sound paneling or bass traps. But since this an intro, I’m sort of getting ahead of myself, and I will cover the practical side of resonance in Part 2.
Nikola Tesla was the archetype of a mad scientist. He invented alternating current, radio broadcasting, and of course, the tesla coil. He is also the subject of many conspiracy theories.
Several centuries later, another guy named Nikola Tesla had heard of this resonance principal, and dedicated his life to discovering how it could be used. Tesla confirmed that everything resonates when he discovered that a pocket-sized mechanical oscillator can cause buildings to crumble and bridges to tremor through the principles of resonance. All that was needed was a pocket-sized piston-driven oscillator sending tuned vibrations into the steel foundations of a building. The power of resonance lies in its ability to multiply force; Just a little bit input energy results in a lot of output energy.
“Although Tesla was not the first to discover resonance he was obsessed with it and created some of the most incredible demonstrations of it ever seen. He studied both mechanical and electrical versions. In the process he created an artificial earthquake, numerous artificial lightning storms, knocked an entire power plant off line in Colorado, and nearly caused the steel frame of a sky scraper under construction in Manhattan to collapse. Tesla realized that the principles of resonance could be used to transmit and receive radio messages well before Marconi.” link
Everything has resonance. Resonance is the principle behind the rattles and vibrations of idle objects caused by the subwoofer hitting a certain note. It is why you can shatter a wine glass with the right audio frequency and a loudspeaker. When the loudspeaker is oscillating at the frequency of the wine glass’ natural resonance frequency, it shatters. Sound waves are pushing the glass at regular intervals, just like you would be pushing the swing, and that regular interval is the same rate that the glass is vibrating. This causes the vibrations in the glass to keep amplifying until the glass can no longer stand the intense shearing action and it breaks into pieces.
Sound waves propagating through a field of air molecules and reflecting off of square walls
In space, electromagnetic waves are exploding out of stars, propagating infinitely outwards. Once on earth, we can detect these vibrations through our eyes, which are like windows through which a certain band of frequencies can pass through. (Interestingly, our eyes are actually tuned to the atmosphere, because the visible spectrum of light corresponds to the spectrum of frequencies which which pass through the filter of Earth’s atmosphere) We can think of all of our senses simply as vibration sensors that are tuned to different frequency ranges. Our ears sense vibration by directing sound waves towards the ear drums, which are compressed and rarefacted by waves of compressed air molecules. Those little drums in your ears are connected to a bone that wiggles some fluid in the inner ear, which excites even tinier little hairs that send signals to the brain, where that information is finally interpreted into what we know as sound. So, next time somebody asks you “if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” you can say that it doesn’t make a sound! It only causes compression waves through the air. If there are no ears to convert compression waves into sound, you could argue that the sound does not exist at that point in time and space.
Figure 1: A graph of a fundamental frequency along with the second harmonic
Each and every system in the universe naturally vibrates at certain frequencies. Theoretically, there is an infinite amount of resonances in any system. Think about it, your body is made of cells, all which have their own resonance frequencies. Your body, which is composed of many smaller sub-systems, has a resonance frequency, just as an organ pipe or a flute or the body of a guitar has a collective resonance frequency. All objects (also known as systems) have a primary, fundamental frequency, as well as many overtone resonance frequencies. The fundamental is the one frequency at which the system sympathetically vibrates the most. The other frequencies at which the system vibrates are comprised of a series of progressively “quieter” overtone frequencies that also vibrate in resonance, but at a lower amplitudes. These are also known as harmonics. Almost all sounds are composed of a series of frequencies all “riding” on top of one another In Figure 1, you can see that when two or more frequencies add up, they produce a new waveform (the resultant waveform in Figure 1). You can produce almost any sort of sound by adding sine waves of different frequencies together (this is the principle behind additive synthesis.
How to find an object’s resonance frequency
“The easiest way to find the resonant frequencies is to place the object next to a speaker and also place a microphone attached to an oscilloscope next to the object. Have the speaker play a tone at a given volume, and then without changing the volume slowly change the pitch (or frequency). If you watch the oscilloscope you will notice that at certain frequencies the amplitude of the wave, which is proportional to the volume of the sound being picked up by the microphone, will be greater than at surrounding frequencies. These are the resonant frequencies, and are detectable as the sound energy absorbed by the object is re-emitted more efficiently at these pitches. Note that you can perform the same procedure, albeit less precisely, in a low-tech way: try holding a large bowl, or coffee can, or some other object that you are hoping to make resonate, in front of your face. Slowly sing a tone with increasing pitch. If there is a resonant frequency in the audible range, you should be able to hear the tone emitted back to your ears at that pitch. Or if you have a piano available to you, try singing into the piano and you’ll see the strings vibrate when you sing their resonant frequencies. ” link
Well, that just about wraps up what I’ve got to say about resonance. In part two of this article, I will explore how resonance principles can help us make informed decisions about recording audio. Do you have anything to say about resonance? Let me know in the comments!
A humorous look at resonance:
More Resources
- Interactive applet demonstrating a point source wave reflecting off of a wall
- Pythagoras, string vibration, and standing waves
- AbsoluteAstronomy.com on Resonance
- Bio on Nikola Tesla
March 28th, 2009 at 5:27 am
Great article. I’m a fairly well versed and well studied producer who’s gotten my hands dirty with my share of music technology. Personally, I’ve noticed a lot of troublesome issues with resonance when using reverb in a mix. So that’s one area to watch out for. Also, keep in mind that your monitors (speakers) that you listen to your mix through have a particular frequency that THEY desire to resonate at. This can create the auditory “illusion” of a set of frequencies, that in reality may not be audible outside your particular brand/model/size of speaker. One way to counteract this problem may be adjusting your EQ settings. Or you can do as some audio engineers do and record a broadcast of pink noise in order to properly set your EQ settings to counteract any resultant resonance/frequency problems. This should take care of troublesome frequencies within your speaker cabinets AND within the room you record!
July 24th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Good articles! Great job man. I’m reading all your posts and they are all very interesting. I’ll follow this religiously!
Thanks
December 30th, 2009 at 5:13 am
Good writing. I’m looking for info to help me design a room tuning system to enhance enjoyment of modal viol jamming. Basically room length 3.5 metres (G) Width 2.6 m (C) etc. Any clues?
January 30th, 2010 at 9:01 am
Great article bro,
it is great to see, that you are looking at the deeper aspect of sound and vibration. Vibration has a very profound significance in all things. Everything in the universe y made up of tiny vibrating strings of energy and sound interacts directly with those vibratory patterns. There is a reason why music has a sort of magical quality and certain notes or melodies can bring out even certain emotions in a person. Also sound healing knowledge is something that is resurfacing in human conciousness, it would be amazing to see more musicians creating with this extra dimension of understanding sound and its possible aplications.
Just recently found your site, but will keep checking it out, good production tips Thanks.
March 6th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
Hallo from Brazil! I have found your url on aol. Handful content! Nancy D. Murphy x
March 11th, 2010 at 3:43 am
GREAT SITE! Where is part 2???
April 13th, 2010 at 8:48 am
Hey man great article! I love the science behind the art. Did you also know that tesla had patented a design that he said could resonante at the earth’s natural frequency and cause it to split itself in half?
October 9th, 2010 at 8:31 am
[...] music. I find it amazing that he could know about such a thing or was it just coincidence. Acoustics Part I: an Introduction to Resonance | EMusicTips I wonder what else he knew. I've read some interesting stuff that his son Christopher put together [...]
November 14th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
thanks, this was great!!!XX
March 7th, 2011 at 9:37 pm
I truly find this a interesting subject. Never looked over this subject in this manner. If you are planning to write more articles about this subject, I definitely will be back soon!
April 2nd, 2011 at 6:10 am
Good read, I often try and trace an items that might be “moving” in sympathy with my sound repoduction and get it out of the room. I am a great believer of having nothing physically between you and your monitors as well, maybe an article on comb filtering next.
cheers
August 20th, 2011 at 3:37 am
I’m impressed, I must say. Really rarely do I encounter a blog that’s both educative and entertaining, and let me tell you, you have hit the nail on the head