Structure of Musical Sound

Every single tone which reaches our ear in the course of a musical work, contains a fullness of information. We perceive a pitch, loudness and tone color. We can also make statements about the steadiness of the pitch, or if the tone is enlivened with vibrato. Furthermore we notice changes and fluctuations in loudness as well as the nature of the tone entrance, be it attacked softly or sharply; similarly we can draw conclusions about the decay of the note. All these details give a characteristic tone picture from which we extract the musical content and also recognize what instrument generated the tone. In this, previously gathered listening experiences, play a not unessential role. Finally we can even draw conclusions about the nature and size of the room in which the music resounds. This acoustic phenomenon can be described by a number of physical factors. In all this there is a certain difficulty posed by the circumstance that the individual characteristics perceived are not each determined by only a single physical quantity, but come about by the cooperation of several components. Nevertheless, the problem of finding an association between objective acoustical data and tonal impressions on the basis of practical experiences should not be overestimated.