Full Transcript Below 👇

(00:00): Intro & Question

Hey everyone, Joe, here. I wanted to post a quick video explainer on one of the most fundamental fundamentals of music: how does sound work? Well to fully understand how sound works, we first need to understand what sound is, right?

(00:11): Sound Defined

Sound is a form of energy produced by an object that is vibrating with enough intensity that we can perceive that energy with our ear. We've got something else in our physical universe called "light" - similar concept there, but we perceive it with our eyes. So with sound, we have to be familiar with this other aspect that all the stuff around us, all the objects around us, are vibrating all the time. It's just not necessarily with enough intensity for us to perceive it with our ear.

(00:42): Molecules Everywhere!

In other words, that bass on the wall, right? It doesn't look like it's moving around, it's not vibrating, right? It looks like it's still. Great. I'm telling you that if we were to zoom in to the molecular level of that bass, to the molecules that are bound together to make it up and make it look like a bass, we would see that all the molecules are vibrating to some degree. With some level of intensity they are moving. It's just not enough that we with our human ears can perceive it. Okay, fine. So the thing with music is that we're producing enough force when we're making objects vibrate, that it can be perceived. There's enough intensity behind the vibration that we can actually hear it.

(01:20): How Sound Works With A String

Now, how does that actually work? Well, I'm going to demonstrate with a string. Strings are used in music a lot to do this whole thing...you know: producing sound. Whether it's on a ukulele or a bass or a guitar or a sitar, an oud, a cello, et cetera, or inside of a piano, strings are really great at producing enough vibration with enough intensity so that we can hear them with our ears. So I'm going to demonstrate right now with one of the strings on this ukulele.

You're going to be able to see the string vibrate after I pluck it.

[ plucks string, showing its vibration ]

You see that? It's not for very long.

[ plucks string again, showing its vibration ]

You see how the string kind of gets blurry there for a second? Well, it's vibrating back and forth very rapidly.

[ plucks string again ]

Okay. I hope that you can perceive that and hear the sound. [ plucks string ]

So how is that working? Well, when I pluck this string [plucks string ], that vibration of the string is causing the air molecules immediately surrounding the string to go crazy. They start bumping into each other. So the air molecules closest to it get moved around, right? Because it's an object saying, "get out of here!". The air molecules are then forced to bump into other air molecules that bump into other air molecules and so on and so forth very, very rapidly, by the way, until they reach an ear. And when they reach an ear, those air molecules bump into the eardrum and the eardrum itself, which is a thin piece of skin pulled taut instead of our ear. Once they bump into that eardrum, it causes it to vibrate. Oh, we've had vibrations of objects before. The eardrum is vibrating at the same rate as that original vibration of our string.

Now this is happening [ snaps fingers ] in almost an instant. We have this thing called the speed of sound, which is very fast, right? So when I pluck this, [ plucks string ], air molecules go, hit my ear, cause it to vibrate, and it sends a signal to my brain that's like, "Hey, think we've got a sound here,", the brain processes it, And it's like, "Yeah, definitely sounds like a ukulele...". Great!

Okay. That's essentially how sound works. Now that's a demonstration with a string. There are so many other things that are causing vibrations with enough intensity that we can perceive it. But this is the basis of how music is working.

(03:31): How Sound Works With A Wind Instrument

Now, with a wind instrument, you have something called a reed. It's a piece of wood that's vibrating enough through a tube - right? - of some sort and it's working in a way where it's producing a vibration, sending air molecules, going crazy to our ears, that vibrate our eardrum to perceive. "Cool, I hear a sound. And I'm going to do a couple of other processes to identify that as a French horn or a clarinet or a bassoon or whatever it is..."

(03:56): How Sound Works With Our Voices

The same thing is true inside of our throats. We have these things called vocal folds, which is essentially like skin that bounces back and forth. It vibrates...hits against the two...the two areas of skin are bouncing against each other enough to produce this vibration that you can perceive as a voice. You hear my voice, right? And when we sing, it's the same kind of deal. It's a vibration of some object somewhere that's at the bottom of all of this.

(04:25): How Sound Works With Synthesizers

Synthesizers are the same way: they were programmed with some circuitry inside or in your computer. Right? But eventually there is an object somewhere that is vibrating. With synthesizers, it's usually a speaker - right? - that is the thing that's vibrating. If you look at a speaker very closely when you're listening to music, be careful, but turn it up really loud and you will start to see the vibration of the speaker back and forth. Keep in mind, this is very, very, very fast. The vibrations that we're talking about are very rapid, but you can still perceive them with your eye.

(04:55): Conclusion

Okay. That's all I got. I hope that that's helpful. This is not just a beginner type of thing. Uh, I didn't, I didn't fully understand how sound worked until long after I finished a fancy music degree, right? This is serious though, because this is the thing that we're controlling. This is the basis of all of music. So if you know how to control sound, regardless of whether you're playing on strings or on keys on a keyboard or blowing through a horn, you know, this is it. This is what we're doing. Okay. Hope that's helpful - signing off. If you have any questions or comments, throw them below or DM us. Bye for now!