3. Harmonic finder dialog

Figure 3.1
Click on thumbnail for full size image.

In figure 3.1, we see the dialog that appears when the search button next to the Code field in figure 2.1 is pressed. In this case we have chosen to look only for Harmonic records that have a name starting with p, and we have chosen to show the harmonics in graph form. The simpler the Harmonic record the faster the computation time, so in this case piped will compute the fastest and then piano2.

Looking at piano2, the tallest purple bar, which is also the leftmost one, is the fundamental or first harmonic (which in this case is also the strongest frequency); the next bar along represents the second harmonic, which has twice the fundamental frequency; the next bar along represents the third harmonic, which has three times the fundamental frequency and so on.

Looking at piped, you can see that some harmonics are missing; actually, this is showing even-numbered harmonics, which is the opposite of what you'd expect to see in a closed pipe instrument where all the harmonics are odd-numbered.