The Sine Wave & Sound Oscillation - The Foundation of Sound

The sine wave is the building block of sound. Simply put, sound is the vibration of particles in the air. As sound travels through the air, it compresses and pulls apart the air, which can be modeled well by an oscillating function; for example, a sine wave. This resource does a great job of modeling a sound wave as it passes through air. If you click the oscillate button, you will begin to see a sine wave. The peaks of the wave represent the most compressed air, and the troughs represent the opposite. Basically, a point above the line of equilibrium is more compressed, while a point below is less compressed. By adjusting the tension slider, you can visualize more complicated oscillations, which would produce distinct sounds. While some oscillations can look completely different from the sine wave, they are all derived from it, as shown by this model. This resource allows you to hear what a (nearly) perfect sine wave sounds like. By selecting different types of waveforms (square, sawtooth, and triangle), you can clearly hear how slight manipulations of the sine wave are able to change how sound is perceived. This video is a really helpful in visualizing this in the context of music; future posts will go into more detail about how the different aspects of sound waves are applied in music.

Works Cited:

1."Final Cut Pro 7 User Manual." Final Cut Pro 7 User Manual. Accessed August 26, 2015. 

2. Gunther, Leon. The Physics of Music and Color. New York, New York: Springer, 2012.

3."Iphone 4 inside a Guitar Oscillation! VERY GOOD!" YouTube. Accessed August 26, 2015. 

4."Online Tone Generator." Online Tone Generator. Accessed August 26, 2015. 

5."Wave on a String." Wave on a String 1.0.0. Accessed August 26, 2015.