Subharmonics and Nonharmonic Overtones (and hubcaps)

Even though electronic music is all the rage these days, people are
still figuring out new ways to make music without digital intervention.



Samuel Gaudet and Claude Gauthier, mathematicians at the University of
Moncton in New Brunswick, have developed the href="http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060603/fob7.asp">tritare.
 This is like a guitar, but the strings branch in a Y-shape.
 This results in the production of nonharmonic overtones,
something typically heard only from percussion instruments.



Meanwhile, at NYU, violinist rel="tag">Mari Kimura has figured out how to
produce subharmonics with her traditional acoustic instrument.
 This enables her to play cello-like notes, an octave below
what one ordinarily hears from a violin.



She says she doesn't really know how she does it, but physicists are href="http://www.world-science.net/othernews/060706_violin.htm">trying
to figure it out.



Sound clips of the tritare are href="http://www.acoustics.org/press/151st/Leger.html">here.
 Clips of Ms. Kimura's subharmonics are href="http://homepages.nyu.edu/%7Emk4/subharmonics.html">here.
 You can but her CD, The World Below G, href="http://homepages.nyu.edu/%7Emk4/buy.html">here.



All this reminds me of a performance at last year's href="http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/10/24/075643.php">Edgefest
at Kerrytown.
 Michael
G. Nastos played the hubcaps.  Music to my ears.
 Clips are at href="http://myspace.com/sublingualensemble">Sublingual's
Myspace page.  



Progress
is being made on the perceptual science of music, but we still do not
understand why people like to do strange things with noise.