The Missing Fundamental

Previous chapters have touched on the strength (or lack of it) of the fundamental tones for those waves that have harmonic structure. This chapter studies the variation of the fundamental’s strength as the piano key number increases. This is followed by a simulation where an analysis is made when various harmonics are removed and/or added. It appears that a low note can be sounded effectively by combining its higher harmonics without using its fundamental frequency. The concept of removing sinusoidal components is extended to removing portions of the frequency spectrum and studying the resulting sound of an actual musical instrument.