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Having two ears is beneficial to us as humans as it gives us an awareness of where sound is coming from. If a sound came from the left side of a persons body then the left ear would pick it up. The right ear will also pick it up because although the sound came from the left, sound can be heard in ever direction not just in one. The correct term for this is a sound that travels 'omni-directionally' So the sound will still reach the other ear just at a lower amplitude and with this piece of basic information, our brain will be able to tell us what way the sound is coming from.
Frequency:
Measurements: Every sound wave that we hear in our atmosphere has its own frequency. A frequency is basically the pitch that we hear it in and these frequencies are measured by its wavelength's. Each frequency has its own 'wavelength'. A wavelength is the width between sound waves. The closer the waves are to each other the higher the pitch or frequency will be, vice verse if the waves are far apart from each other then the pitch or frequency will be lower. Also amplitude plays a part in measurements and this is measured by how high the waveforms are. If the waves are tall and high then the amplitude is strong meaning that the sound is loud, alternatively if the sound is quiet, the waves will be small and short. When a sound is made in a large room and the sound can still be heard even after the sound has stopped. We are experiencing 'reverberation' This is the act of sound waves bouncing off walls and gradually losing amplitude every time. We know that high frequencies are much easier to absorb than low frequencies so if a high pitched sound was made in this room, we would stop hearing it faster than what we would if we made a low frequency sound. When using frequencies to categorize different notes in musical terms we can see that the note C has a frequency of approximately 262Hz. With this information we can tell that if we doubled 262Hz we would get 524Hz which is approximately a full octave or 12 full musical notes including sharps (#) Frequency is measured in Hertz or Hz. 1000Hz which is abbreviated to 1khz. Humans can hear anything between 20hz to 20,000hz (20khz)
Attack:
The attack of a sound is how quickly you want the note to hit. A drum would have an extremely quick attack where as a violin or an electronic pad would have a very slow attack as the sound gradually builds up.
Decay:
The decay is how much time in which you want the attack to reach the sustain level which I will explain next.
Sustain:
The sustain is the main level of the note until it is released. As you can see in the picture on the right, the sustain is held tightly in place before the release kicks in, where as on the second picture there is a gradual decrease in the sustain.
Release:
The release envelope is the time taken for the note to fade back to silence from the main level of the sound (sustain)
The Sine Wave: The sine wave is the standard plain waveform which gives a smooth, flowing sound and is me as well as many other electronic music producers tend to use this wave form for things such as sub bass.
The Square Wave: The Square wave tends to give off a robotic electric, tinny sound.
The Triangle Wave: The Triangle wave form is a lot like the sine wave form but with a lot steeper gradients and less of a smooth sound due to the sudden change at the peaks of the wave form.
The Sawtooth Wave: The Sawtooth wave is popular in electronic music due to its gritty, aggressive sounding tone, sawtooth waves are popularly used in things such as hardcore, dubstep and drum n bass.