The Math Behind Music and Sound Synthesis

We hear sound because our ears can detect vibrations in the air, which come from sources like everyday objects, speakers and other people talking. Why do certain musical intervals sound the way they do? How are electronic music instruments made? This video will be all about sound frequencies, wave shapes and the math behind it all.

Timestamps
00:00 Intro
00:37 Pitch vs Frequency
01:27 Chromatic Scale, Consonance & Dissonance
05:18 Harmonic Series, Tonality & Instrument Timbre
07:37 Wave Shapes & Sound Design

Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

Thanks for watching, Inspecto

[turpialito]

Mad skillset. Maths, music, coding, video editing, and a factual, no BS approach to the gist of the matter. Looking forward to your upcoming stuff. Cheers, mate.

[David-zylr]

Was this just an elaborate scheme to show us that sick beat?

(I absolutely loved the video btw)

[quantumgaming]

The way you animate and explain is incredible

[XanderGouws]

You really thought you could sneak *the lick* past us at 7:27, huh ;)

[jimmy]

This covers so much ground in such a small amount of time, really helped by such intuitive animations. I’m going to share this with all my musician mates.

[ShaunakDe]

Your channel reminds me of the best parts of college. Learning different concepts in a relatively short span, and being endlessly fascinated with the core concepts. Thanks for taking the time to make these.

[KlaudiusL]

@11:30 I want a 1 hour version of this
Nice vid, new sub here 👏👏

[Testgeraeusch]

I started making electronic music around 2011 when my friend showed me a java programm that would make the speaker play a series or beeps. I started off writing music exclusively as rows and rows of ascii code that would then be read by some newer version of the software provided by that friend and generate a .wav file from that. The catch was: every instrument had to be defined as a math function of time. Coming from that perspective, i can tell you: Sound design is a lot harder than just adding some waves. I tried, and i failed a lot. I was so happy the first time i managed to make a decent FM bass that the sound cougth me completely off guard. XD Even worse, i was never really into games or chiptune stuff; i was just to lazy to install FL studio or something similar that would make me some "professional" tunes. I eventually switched to linux multi media studio around 2015, but came back to that raw saw&square sound last year. Now i'm trying to make the most out of it and see if this weird software where every sound is pure math-hell could be used for educational purposes. The new version featues a simple syntax for microtones and even has some basic filters. And we simplified the syntax a lot.
I'm currently preparing a bunch of slides for a small presentation or vid about the math of the so called microtonal intervals and natural/non-12TET tuning systems. But my channel isn't exactly an educational channel, so it may as well be a waste of time or just something for myself to spend the time in lockdown. But if you are curious/interested in this stuff i could send you a .zip with the software and some demo files for easier demo sounds than the ones you used for this vid (like playing actuall 400Hz tones or really perfect fifths ;) ).

Have a nice day and stay save :)

[curiodyssey]

Bro, if you upgraded your audio equipment you will 100% be in the hundreds of thousands of subs within a year.

[holdonasec]

This is wild because this mean that irrational numbers sound better and any irrational number multiplied will make a irrational number so frusciante was right by detuning to get a better harmonic.

[plshalpme]

you got recommended to me, then your other videos got recommended on the front page, then algorithm asked me if i liked you
looks like the never blinking eye has turned towards you

[thefranciscoflores]

when he started building the song as he was explaining the waveform sounds i wanted to cry. that was so beautiful

[donbonesmith]

that little beat at the end was a banger

[plasmarade]

GG on 1k subs, you reached 1k overnight, nice to see how the algorithm blessed you

[antipainK]

Wow, you explained it far better than anyone else!
I needed this kind of scientific explanation of music, all other people talk about "rules" and that "you have to feel it, just redo it over and over and you'll get it".
This filled the empty space in my soul 😍

[MusicBeats_]

I can't stop myself from subscribing to you... Your deep scientific and intuitive explanation of music through this video is amazing brother... Would be more happy if you do some sound designing tutorials (😅😅)

And the beat at 10:25 is simple but 🥵🥵🥵

[ArduinoHocam]

Would be great to mention, why do different instruments sound different for the same note ? Like note D on violin and note D on guitar? because of their base frequency same doesnt mean the harmonics are also same, due to the different type of instruments and their materials, they sound a bit different even though the note is same.

[neetishdhavgaye]

I am just a kid... learning math, science
Now I can see how to corelate them easily.
Glad you made this video !!!

[Zac]

dude i rly like your channel, one idea for you, make a video covering raycasting, i would be really happy to see it

[Zylop]

Dude, please explain to me why the heck you have just 2k subs and about 1k clicks. You could be a YouTuber with a few million subs. Love your Videos <3