With most tonal (non-percussive) instruments, one selects a pitch by establishing a particular setup of the pieces involved (fingers, mouth, buttons, pedals, etc.) and then (if required) manipulating of one or more of the pieces. To select a different pitch, one would arrange the pieces in a different way before or during the manipulation. More abstractly: most instruments map positions to pitch.
piano: finger in the right position, then push down harmonica: mouth in the right position, then blow or draw air theremin: hand in the right position (no manipulation needed) violin: left hand finger in the right position, then bow with the right hand
It is also possible to map velocity (rather than position) to pitch. If you run a fingernail across a finely grooved surface (e.g., the edge of a CD case or an appropriately textured shower curtail), the frequency of the resulting sound is proportional to the speed of your fingernail across the surface. You can even (try to) play simple tunes like “Mary had a little lamb”. The few times I’ve tried this I’ve found it curiously difficult.
Does anyone know of any “established” instruments (possibly rare) that operate on a velocity-implies-pitch principle?
I think the penny whistle qualifies (and perhaps other types of flute-like instruments). With every finger setup, blowing softly produces one note while blowing harder produces another. Certain finger positions make the higher or lower note easier to produce.
Just to point out, there’s actually a major physical difference between how a traditional instrument selects pitch, and how a theremin selects pitch.
With, say, a stringed instrument, adjusting where you press the string changes the effective length of the string. A string of a given length has a certain resonant frequency, and that’s the frequency you hear when the string is plucked.
A woodwind works mostly the same way, except you’re changing the effective length of the entire instrument. A bullroarer wouldn’t count because you’re still limited to the resonant frequency and harmonics of the instrument.
A theremin, however, does not involve resonant frequencies at all. Instead, there’s an oscillating voltage inside the worky bits. The position of your hand to the antenna affects the capacitance of that circuit, which directly affects the frequency of the oscillation, which can then be mapped to a frequency that you hear.
That’s still not exactly what you want, though.
The only example I can think of that IS what you want, is the tesla coil. Rig a tesla coil up to spew lightning out at X zaps per second, and X is the frequency of the sound you’ll hear. Play the zelda theme in front of a group of nerds. Collect youtube infamy.
This may seem like cheating, since you’re changing frequency instead of velocity, but that’s actually all you’re doing when you rub your thumb faster across a bumpy surface. You hit bumps more often -> higher frequency -> higher pitch.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the more flexible synthesizers with velocity sensing keyboards would let you program them to do this, at least in some sense. Perhaps by making the key velocity correspond to a pitch bend setting, as if you had operated the pitch bend wheel.
I’d take issue with the last claim there. A theremin works exactly by changing the resonant frequency of the LC circuit at its heart.
But in any case, the principle of the sound production is unrelated to my query. The main thing I’m after is whether any instrument requires repeatable, controlled velocity to achieve particular pitches.
A fun video, but not quite what I’m after. That is a good example of non-resonant-frequency sound production (although underlying the Tesla coil zaps could be a resonant circuit, although I suspect it is digitally controlled in that example.) The goal is to identify something that requires human velocity adjustment to control pitch.
Simplicio: the bullroarer (which I was not familiar with) is the closest I’ve seen. Control seems to be limited (you’re not going to get a good melody out of it), and I have a suspicion that the sensation is that it is force controlled. That is, the fact that the motion is circular means that you control the rotational velocity by changing the force applied to the string, although, to be sure, that force must be applied back and forth in time with the rotation, which means you must change the direction of your hand “faster and faster” to get higher pitches. Actually, now that I think about it, the hand itself doesn’t need to have any particular speed – only the speed of the moving device matters, which is set purely by the applied force or, if you’d like, by the duration of the cyclical motion of the hand. (The hand will have a whole range of velocities during each complex cycle, but only the duration of the cycle determines the pitch.)
The thing I’m after is whether any instrument requires precise velocity control of a human body part. In playing with the fingernail-across-textured-surface “instrument”, I found it rather tricky to jump consistently between, say, a note and its fifth. I’m curious if this is a matter of practice and familiarity or if we just aren’t built for velocity-on-spec at this level of precision. (I suspect the latter.) If there is an instrument out there that requires velocity control for pitch selection, it would be interesting.
I don’t know what they’re called, but those flexible tubes that you spin over your head meet the OP’s criteria. Slow spin = low pitch, and increasingly higher speeds create higher pitches along the harmonic series of the resonant frequency of the tube.
In a sense, non-valved horns like bugles also answer the OP, but via the speed of the player’s breath through the horn (excluding changes in embouchure). They also play only notes along the harmonic series, hence the melody of Taps, which was created for the bugle.
A non-valved horn is played exactly like a valved horn except that you can’t change the effective length of the tubing with the valves. It’s like playing a trumpet without ever pressing a valve. For any given valve combination of the trumpet (and for the bugle) you can play several notes in the harmonic series by changing the pressure and therefore the frequency of the lips’ vibration. It is not related to speed of the breath.
Two instruments that get close are a glass armonica and a Hammond organ. Neither are absolutely dead on, but close.
The glass armonic (glass harp, glass harmonica) spins a series of blown glass disks on a spindle. You play it by touching your fingers to the rim of the desired disk. The osund is essentially the same as rubbing your finger around the rim of a wine glass. The frequency is determined by a mixture of issues, but the clear basic one is actually the mass and geometry of the disk. However, as anyone who has rubbed a finger on a wine glass rim knows - there is a specific speed at which the system resonates. Your finger is grabbing and releasing the edge of the glass and transfering energy into the glass. It isn’t a great deal different to how a bowed instrument is energised by the catch and release of the bow hairs on the string. So although the velecoty of the edge of the disks in the armonium doesn’t directly determine the pitch it is bound up into the pitch.
The Hammond organ uses a series of layered disks make from layered materials tht have some level of electrical resistance. The thickness of one layer is varied in a periodic manner around the disks. An electrical current is passed through thte disk and picked up by a wiper. When the disk is rotated the resistance varies. This generates the tone. So here the speed of rotation of a physical element directly determines the pitch. However each note is generated by a seperate disk, and is selected by the press of a key. So velecity isn’t used to encode the selection of the note.
The only instrument I can think of the fully meets the request is a one off.
Laurie Anderson had a violin body fitted with a tape head and the bow fitted with a length of tape that was prerecorded with sound. When she bowed the instrument the pitch of the sound was directly determined by the speed of her bowing. However she tended to use segments of music or voice, and used the effect to provide wide variations in pitch and tempo rather than actually determine precise musical pitches.
Following up on Laurie Anderson’s violin, I think that a later version used a timing track on the tape, and it was linked to a sampler - so the replay speed of any sampled sound could be controlled by the bowing speed. In principle this gets about as close to the OP’s criteria as I can imagine.
One trick with the initial version was that she could play the sound backwards. I don’t know if the later version included direction information in the timing track, or whether the sampler she used could run backwards. It would be possible to do, but complicates matters.
I’m not a horn player (I fooled around with a tuba for a few months in the late 1970s), so I easily could be mistaken. Are you saying that the only way to change pitch on a non-valved horn is by changes of embouchure? I thought you could hold the same embouchure and get different tones. Am I wrong about that?
you can’t map the theremin. the frequency is determined by capacitance whose value could be determined by more than one position of the hand involving distance, rotation, finger position.
Doesn’t that therefore fit the requirements? Changing the velocity of your lip vibrations changes the pitch.
As for one that has to do with air speed, I’d consider the flute.
As for an instrument like you’ve described, I can only think of all those scraping percussion instruments (eg. Güiro), and they are really hard to tune to a specific pitch.
One is a series of water glasses with different amounts of water in them, and you play music by stroking the rims and getting the glasses to vibrate. Presumably your hand has to stroke at a certain velocity to make it work. Don’t know the name of this.
There is a musical group called the Marcel Duchamp Memorial Players that created a unique instrument called “stroke rods”, a series of long thin pipes the the musician would literally strike by hand to get them vibrating and putting out tones. Again, I think the velocity of the hand stroking was key to getting it to work, but ot may be that each pipe is only capable of a songe tone. It’s been probably 25 years since I’ve seen them perform.
It’s mostly based on the tension in your lips. How hard you blow also varies, but that’s in reaction to the lip tension, not a cause. Blowing harder will just get you the same note louder.
There’s a theme apparent in the OP that none of the suggestions get even close to, except the scratching/turntablism thing, but in that case the blips being moved aren’t evenly spaced.
You can kind of play a zipper, especially a long one that is well supported at the ends (like on the flap of a tent, or on an equipment cover). You get higher notes by moving it faster. The point is that the zipper has a repeating structure that makes one fundamental vibration for every unit you go past. Increments equal individual vibrations here.
Isn’t there in the middle of “Inna Godda Divida” (however you spell it) some guitar playing that amplifies the player’s finger running along the string, achieving this effect with the wire wrapping of the string? At least, that’s what it sounds like. This is during a fairly quiet portion just after a long keyboard section, and it’s a kind of low squealing or scratching sound or maybe even a roar.
Panurge, that isn’t what you meant by “scratching”, is it? You reference the velocity of an LP, not guitar strings.
There are various instruments that for some other reason change their pitch with a velocity, but that’s different.
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by your question, but I’ll try to explain what I meant by “velocity” of a record.
Turntablists will often have specially made records that include a variety of different sounds, beat sequences, loops, etc. Some of these are just a single note - basically a sine wave - that plays for 5-10 seconds. By manipulating the record with his hands, the artist can actually play melodies from that single note.
Apart from the bullroarers I think this is probably the closest the OP will get to a (commonly used) melody instrument that changes its pitch specifically and exclusively by manipulating the speed of the instrument. It is exactly the same thing that happens in your zipper example, except that you move the tent (record) and keep the zipper (needle) in place.
Yeah, that sounds right. I wasn’t remembering clearly. Thanks for the correction.
But the flexible tubes I mentioned still qualify, and unlike the bullroarer, they can actually play distinct pitches in a quasi-musical fashion. Maybe a really talented bullroarer player can make music, but the tubes are easier, if somewhat limited.