The beauty of twelve piano notes made visible on CymaScope

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Published 2014-12-16

This CymaScope video makes visible the first twelve notes of a concert grand piano tuned to A4 = 440 Hertz. All notes show the attack, sustain and decay phases. By pausing the video it is possible to observe great detail in the geometry created by each note as it is imprinted onto the CymaScope's water membrane. The sound of an individual piano note is not constant but varies due to the string's partials (also known as harmonics) reflecting off the sound board and piano cabinet, adding tonal 'color' to the sound as the string receives some of the reflected sounds. The tonal color variations of each note are made visible, as evidenced by the evolving geometries in the video of each note. Because no two pianos are identical, every piano has a unique sound. The first octave of the piano, presented in this video, features single strings, while higher octaves have either two or three strings for each note. (Piano recordings courtesy of Dan Koehler of Naples Piano Company.)

All Comments (7)

@cymascope4986 8 years ago

CymaScope.com can make any music visible and offer this service to all musicians. The sound file must be your own music, to avoid copyright issues. To obtain a quote please use the contact form on our web site.
@desertfox432 7 years ago

Thank you. Can you please post both a 440Hz/432Hz version in Pure Intervals, Pythagorean, Just, or even Renold-Temperament? You may need to use instruments other than piano to satisfy this. Love your app. I feel addressing these temperaments visually will make it more thorough when addressing the controversy.
@Picato75 6 years ago

Is there a difference in harmonic vision when tuning to 432 Hz??
@herbspencer4332 6 years ago

What do the light and dark areas represent physically?
@mikefromspace6616 8 years ago

2:52 Sweet 16
@CharissaChs 8 years ago

i wanna know what my own music sounds like :p