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Updated: June 14, 2025
His words awoke overtones in higher regions, which vibrated with them, but these overtones needed the atmosphere of the Mysteries, or they died away without having been heard. In the centre of the world of the Platonic Dialogues stands the personality of Socrates. We need not here touch upon the historical aspect of that personality.
We have not only to transmit sound, such as isolated dots and dashes, but to send through the air every rise and fall and inflection of the human voice just as it is recorded in the minute lines of a phonographic record. "Experiments have shown that articulation, that is, understand, a speech, depends upon overtones and upper harmonies of a frequency of 5,000 or 8,000 or more."
If the tone C is played in the lower octave of the piano, no less than sixteen overtones vibrate with it. A few of these are audible to the ordinary listener, but very keen ears will hear more of them. In Claude Debussy's compositions, his system of harmony and tonality is intimately connected with these laws of natural harmonics.
The Orientalist par excellence, he has somehow been confounded with Meissonier and Gérôme, has been called glittering like the former, hard as was the latter. It is true there are no emotional undertones in his temperament, the brilliant overtones predominating; but it is also true that when he died his manner was changing.
Nobody could fail to distinguish between the sound of a note played on a penny whistle and the same note given out on a violin or a cornet: yet the actual rate of wave would be the same in each case. The reason is that no tone is a pure fundamental tone, there are always super-added a number of other tones, termed the overtones.
For example, the richness of feeling in the tones of certain instruments as compared with others is doubtless due to the fact that through the presence of more overtones and the admixture of noise, the reaction is more complex; the tense excitement of high and loud tones, as compared with the soft and low, is probably connected with the fact that their higher vibration rate and greater amplitude of vibration produce a more marked effect, a more pervasive disturbance, the organism does not right itself and recover so rapidly and easily.
The fundamental tone determines the pitch; the overtones determine the quality, tone-color, timbre, or physiognomy of the tone.
Blind voices are often caused by the exaggerated practice of closing off the throat too tightly from the head cavities; that is, drawing the pillars of the fauces too far toward the wall of the throat. The large resonating chamber thus formed yields tones that are powerful close at hand, but they do not carry, because they are poor in overtones.
The palate has to furnish, besides, the top cover against which the breath strikes, also an extremely elastic floor for the breath sounding above it against the hard palate or in the nose. This breath, by forming the overtones, makes certain the connection with the resonance of the head cavities.
If a tone is produced and we say, there is the perfect tone, all it proves is that it corresponds to our mental concept of tone. It satisfies our ear, which is another term for our taste. Can a tone be disagreeable and still be scientifically produced? One combination of fundamental and overtones is, strictly speaking, just as scientific as another combination.
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