Tag: resonance

Harmonics

Harmonics are something that you learn about in physics class. They’re also practical in the music world. The more, better in tune, and stronger harmonics your tone has, the better it sounds.

What are Harmonics?

Harmonics are the overtones that your ear percieves, but can’t hear.

If you cut a string in half, it’s an octave higher. If you cut it in half again, it sounds a Perfect 5th higher. Here’s a list of the harmonic progressions below.

  1. Octave
  2. Perfect 5th
  3. Perfect 4th
  4. Major 3rd
  5. Minor 3rd
  6. Major 2nd
  7. Minor 2nd

The math and science behind this is here.

How Do Harmonics Affect Me as a Musician?

The stronger, better in-tune, and more various the harmonics, the better the sound.

Pianists

Pianists may have checked out by now, thinking harmonics don’t affect us. They do.

You know how sometimes you have to hold down a note long past it has finished making a sound? The composer is using resonance by having you play other notes from the harmonic series, which activates that string.

You can use the harmonic series to double-check and make sure that a piano is in tune. Hold down the keys for each note in the harmonic series. Play the bottom note. If you can hear the higher sounds, the piano is decently in tune. This only works on an acoustic piano.

These two things happen because of the laws of physics involving resonance. I talk a lot about resonance here.

Flutists

We use harmonics as part of our tone studies. The way we do that is by changing the air direction, pointing it higher with our lips. This causes a higher tone to come out – a harmonic. We can practice tuning the harmonics because when they’re in tune our sound is better, we can practice strengthening them, and we can practice adding them.

Here are some nice, easy, free studies to practice them. These ones are really good for helping you to tune your harmonics.

The first page of this book has harmonic studies that are a little bit harder. They’re more about aiming your air and helping you get a good sound and a large amount of harmonics on each note. The more harmonics you have on each note, the better your sound overall.

Bonus: Being able to play high harmonics also helps you hit the high notes with better sound and intonation.

Sometimes it’s fun to make up a harmonic exercise, too.

Extended Techniques

Every once in awhile, a piece will ask you to play a harmonic. It looks like a diamond over the top of two notes, like this.

Picture of a harmonic on the staff
This is the notation for a harmonic.

This technique is done for effect. The sound from a harmonic has less overtones and undertones, so the sound is a little bit different. I usually see it in pieces from the Romantic era.

Conclusion

You can use harmonics as a parlor trick, but they have a real usefulness about them. They’re especially useful in a winds, but they’re good to know about with every instrument.

The First Advanced Breathing Technique

In my last post, I talked about Belly Breathing, which is the first kind of breathing that you learn. This article is about the first kind of advanced breathing technique that you learn, sometimes called J breathing. You usually learn this technique in high school.

J breathing used to be considered a different school of thought than belly breathing. Now they are both used because they each have their own purpose.

What is J Breathing’s Purpose?

This advanced breathing technique is for when you don’t need to use much air and you want to increase your resonance (I’ll talk about resonance a little later). It also helps with accented, short notes.

How Do I Do J Breathing?

Remember how I talked about pulling your belly muscles in for the exhale during the last article? With J breathing, you only pull in the top half of your muscles, leaving your lower abs relaxed. You’re making an imaginary J with your abs. You breathe in as if you were belly breathing.

Sometimes your abs make a gentle movement. This would be for short phrases where you don’t need much air, so you make it sound as good as possible.

Sometimes your abs make a sharp, quick movement. This would be for things like sforzando, accents, or marcato. The quick movement of the abs is putting quick pressure on your lungs, making an explosion of air, which helps with your quick volume changes.

What is resonance?

I’m about to get really technical, here. If you don’t want to know the science behind resonance, just know that it increases the overtones and the undertones of the tone that is played, making it sound better.

We all learned (or will learn) about resonance in physics class. Every item vibrates at a different frequency, on an elemental level. When a tone is made near an item, it can cause the vibration of that item to deepen, making the same tone that was made.

This is why the proverbial opera singer can make a glass shatter with her voice. If you want to learn more about resonance, this would be a good place to start.

Why Does J Breathing Increase Resonance?

Your whole body resonates with the sounds you’re making on your instrument. The more relaxed your body is, the more it resonates. By leaving the bottom half of your abs loose, you’re increasing the amount of resonance your body can do.

What Other Purpose Does J Breathing Have?

Sometimes when we do short phrases, we automatically breathe in between the phrases, even when we don’t have to. If there are too many short phrases in a row, it starts to feel like we’re hyperventilating. We get dizzy, light-headed, and tired.

J-breathing automatically decreases the amount of breath that you pull in and use. You aren’t using your lower abs, so the visceral mass (intestines, etc) that is behind the lower abs aren’t being used to put pressure on the diaphragm. That causes the lungs to not empty as much as with belly breathing, therefore using less air.

Conclusion

We only learn J breathing after we master belly breathing. It’s designed to be learned after we have learned to maximize our lung capacity. That’s what makes it an advanced breathing technique.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting sore abs just from reading this! This technique takes awhile to master, so don’t be upset if it takes a month or two to get it down.

Next week will be the final article in this series. There’s one more advanced breathing technique, and it’s the best (and hardest) one!