At 7:58 AM +0000 10/14/02, Stephen Airy wrote:
>I would like to see a good computer program that can listen to a note
>being played on a musical instrument, and determine the characteristics
>of the harmonics. I would assume such a program would be limited by the
>quality of your microphone and/or sound card. (My brother says FFT
>(something fourier transform I think) would do it). Also it'd be nice to
>be able to extract certain sounds, or electronically alter the harmonics,
>so you can experiment with different sounds.
Check on eBay for a Synclavier, made by New England Digital. By now,
it's 25-year-old technology. But for years it was the only
synthesizer which could take attack of one sampled sound and combined
it with the wave-form of another sampled sound. Pat Metheny and
Oscar Peterson were big proponents.
Check out http://www.digidesign.com/ for high-end audio recording
studio software/hardware. Twelve years ago, the software was
described in a magazine article, with a 3-D graph of of FFT analysis.
I'm sure that technology is still one of the cornerstones of its
system. A local recording studio just moved its PC-based system out
in place of DigiDesign's Mac-based systems, an investment well into
the five figures. The digital editing is quite powerful, allowing
correction for poor intonation, poor time, in short poor musicianship.
Did you ever buy a new set of headphones?
Bill Ballard RPT
NH Chapter, P.T.G.
"There are day people and there are night people, and they will
unconsciously seek each other out so they can drive each other crazy"
...........AM Radio Psychologist Dr. Joy Browne
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