This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

by Daniel J. Levitin

Clarinets, for example, are characterized by having relatively high amounts of energy in the odd harmonics—three times, five times, and seven times the multiples of the fundamental frequency, etc. (This is a consequence of their being a tube that is closed at one end and open at the other.) Trumpets are characterized by having relatively even amounts of energy in both the odd and the even harmonics (like the clarinet, the trumpet is also closed at one end and open at the other, but the mouthpiece and bell are designed to smooth out the harmonic series). A violin that is bowed in the center will yield mostly odd harmonics and accordingly can sound similar to a clarinet. But bowing one third of the way down the instrument emphasizes the third harmonic and its multiples: the sixth, the ninth, the twelfth, etc.