CHAPTER 10

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The Anatomy of a Sound

This chapter covers:

  • What is sound?

  • How do we measure loudness and pitch?

  • What makes some sounds of the same pitch and amplitude sound different?

  • What is a decibel?

Part II of this book looks at synthesizing sound, but before you can do that, you need to understand what sound is made up of. There are three components to a sound—its volume, pitch, and timbre. Volume is how loud we perceive a sound to be, whereas pitch is how high it sounds. Timbre is much more complicated, and it is the quality or characters of a sound. For example, when middle C is played on a trumpet and a piano, the note has the same volume ...

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