Imagine a band — a massive orchestra, a jazz quartet, or an indie rock outfit. Now think about what you’d hear when all the bandmates on all their different instruments play the same note. You can hear that the notes are all the same, yet somehow they all sound very different. That’s weird — an A on the clarinet is the same as an A on the violin … right? Well, as this whiteboard-animating music theorist tells us, not quite.
The YouTube user 12Tone tackled this very question in a visual journey called “Why Don't All Instruments Sound The Same?” It’s a simple but excellent question: if a note is the name of a pitch, and a pitch has a fixed frequency, then an A should be an A whether it’s played on the tubax or the piccolo. But that’s simply not the case. While instrument size and material certainly have an impact on how these notes sound, the answer is actually much deeper. Watch to learn about the cracks between octaves, how our brains perceive sound and why our tuning system is actually far from perfect. After watching you may have a deeper appreciation for your favorite instruments, and their super unique sounds.