Читать книгу Sound - John Tyndall - Страница 25

Table of Contents

Physical Distinction between Noise and Music—A Musical Tone Produced by Periodic, Noise Produced by Unperiodic, Impulses—Production of Musical Sounds by Taps—Production of Musical Sounds by Puffs—Definition of Pitch in Music—Vibrations of a Tuning-Fork; their Graphic Representation on Smoked Glass—Optical Expression of the Vibrations of a Tuning-Fork—Description of the Siren—Limits of the Ear; Highest and Deepest Tones—Rapidity of Vibration Determined by the Siren—Determination of the Lengths of Sonorous Waves—Wave-Lengths of the Voice in Man and Woman—Transmission of Musical Sounds through Liquids and Solids

IN OUR last chapter we considered the propagation through air of a sound of momentary duration. We have to-day to consider continuous sounds, and to make ourselves in the first place acquainted with the physical distinction between noise and music. As far as sensation goes, everybody knows the difference between these two things. But we have now to inquire into the causes of sensation, and to make ourselves acquainted with the condition of the external air which in one case resolves itself into music and in another into noise.

We have already learned that what is loudness in our sensations is outside of us nothing more than width of swing, or amplitude, of the vibrating air-particles. Every other real sonorous impression of which we are conscious has its correlative without, as a mere form or state of the atmosphere. Were our organs sharp enough to see the motions of the air through which an agreeable voice is passing, we might see stamped upon that air the conditions of motion on which the sweetness of the voice depends. In ordinary conversation, also, the physical precedes and arouses the psychical; the spoken language, which is to give us pleasure or pain, which is to rouse us to anger or soothe us to peace, existing for a time, between us and the speaker, as a purely mechanical condition of the intervening air.

Noise affects us as an irregular succession of shocks. We are conscious while listening to it of a jolting and jarring of the auditory nerve, while a musical sound flows smoothly and without asperity or irregularity. How is this smoothness secured? By rendering the impulses received by the tympanic membrane perfectly periodic. A periodic motion is one that repeats itself. The motion of a common pendulum, for example, is periodic, but its vibrations are far too sluggish to excite sonorous waves. To produce a musical tone we must have a body which vibrates with the unerring regularity of the pendulum, but which can impart much sharper and quicker shocks to the air.

Imagine the first of a series of pulses following each other at regular intervals, impinging upon the tympanic membrane. It is shaken by the shock; and a body once shaken cannot come instantaneously to rest. The human ear, indeed, is so constructed that the sonorous motion vanishes with extreme rapidity, but its disappearance is not instantaneous; and if the motion imparted to the auditory nerve by each individual pulse of our series continues until the arrival of its successor, the sound will not cease at all. The effect of every shock will be renewed before it vanishes, and the recurrent impulses will link themselves together to a continuous musical sound. The pulses, on the contrary, which produce noise, are of irregular strength and recurrence. The action of noise upon the ear has been well compared to that of a flickering light upon the eye, both being painful through the sudden and abrupt changes which they impose upon their respective nerves.

The only condition necessary to the production of a musical sound is that the pulses should succeed each other in the same interval of time. No matter what its origin may be, if this condition be fulfilled the sound becomes musical. If a watch, for example, could be caused to tick with sufficient rapidity—say one hundred times a second—the ticks would lose their individuality and blend to a musical tone. And if the strokes of a pigeon’s wings could be accomplished at the same rate, the progress of the bird through the air would be accompanied by music. In the humming-bird the necessary rapidity is attained; and when we pass on from birds to insects, where the vibrations are more rapid, we have a musical note as the ordinary accompaniment of the insects’ flight.24 The puffs of a locomotive at starting follow each other slowly at first, but they soon increase so rapidly as to be almost incapable of being counted. If this increase could continue up to fifty or sixty puffs a second, the approach of the engine would be heralded by an organ-peal of tremendous power.