(click to play)
| Notes
are horizontal. A musical pitch is a frequency that persists, so it appears as a horizontal band. |
 Twinkle, little star:
spectrogram and manuscript
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Rhythms are vertical. Short, rhythmic sounds contain many frequencies, but don't last long. They appear as vertical elements. |
| Octaves
are the same color. Octaves-- doubling the frequency-- are musically nearly equivalent. I usually choose colors that reinforce this. |
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| Higher
pitches are more sharply defined. A frequency of, for example, 16 cycles per second, can't be pinned down to a hundredth of a second. |
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Complex
music looks complex!
It takes a skilled listener to
separate the different parts of a
complex piece of music. The same applies to the images.
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