False Tones
Some large conical instruments like tubas have a strong and useful resonance that is not in the well-known harmonic series. For example, most large B-flat tubas have a strong resonance at low E-flat (E-flat1, 39 Hz), which is between the fundamental and the second harmonic (an octave higher than the fundamental). These alternative resonances are often known as false tones or privileged tones.
The most convincing explanation for false-tones is that the horn is acting as a 'third of a pipe' rather than as a half-pipe. The bell remains an anti-node, but there would then be a node 1/3 of the way back to the mouthpiece. If so, it seems that the fundamental would be missing entirely, and would only be inferred from the overtones. However, the node and the anti-node collide in the same spot and cancel out the fundamental.
Read more about this topic: Acoustic Resonance
Famous quotes containing the words false and/or tones:
“Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where to set them right.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“‘Tis not that thy mien is stately,
‘Tis not that thy tones are soft;”
—Charles Stuart Calverley (1831–1884)