Monday, 6 November 2017

NEAR TO THE WILD HEART (CLARICE LISPECTOR) AND TIMBRE OF SONIC WAVES

Joana remembered how once, a few months after she was married, she had tirned to her husband to ask him something. They were out. And before she´d even finished her sentence, to Octávio´s surprise, she had stopped- brow furrowed, gaze amused. Ah- she had realized- she´d just repeated one of the voices she´d heard so often when she was single, always vaguely perplexed. The voice of a young woman besides her man. As her own had rung out just then to Octávio: sharp, empty, soaring upwards, with identical, clear notes. Something unfinished, ecstatic, somewhat satiated. Trying to scream… Bright days, clear and dry, sexless day voice and days, choir boys in an outdoor mass. And something lost, heading for mild despair… That newlywed timbre had a history, a fragile history taht went unnoticed by the owner of the voice, but not by the owner of this one



Pitch, loudness and timbre are three characteristics of sonic waves that can be explained by physics magnitudes. Pitch is related with frecuency, high-pitched sounds with high frecuencies and deep voices (like if you are inside a clay pot) belong to the low frecuencies. Loudness, which is usually measured in decibels, corresponds with the intensity and the amplitude of the wave.
Lastly, the today physic concept is timbre, which is what makes you distinguish one sound from another, a violin from a piano, for instance. The timbre depends on the shape of the wave, each sound has a special shape that makes it unique. This peculiar shape never is the perfect armonic one that physicists draw. I didn´t know that, as the text suggests, the timbre is also influenced by the marital status of the focal point of the wave

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