[Harp-L] Why the harmonica needs mad scientists...

[Vern]

> On Jan 20, 2019, at 6:07 AM, Richard Sleigh <rrsleigh at xxxxx> wrote:
> 
> …….I’d love to see voiceprints of harmonica notes and chords - before and
> after the process of working on reeds / slots.
> 
> ……….Has anyone ever done this?
> 
> ……...If anyone has ideas on voiceprint type gizmos to analyzing the results of
> reed plate work, I am all ears.

The free Audacity app will record a digital audio file and then display a spectrogram or “voiceprint.”  There is even a tutorial video on how to use this feature.
If you don’t already have it, download Audacity and analyze away!

I used a more primitive software package for several of the comb materials in the 1997 SPAH Materials Seminar test. (Gasp!…that’s 21 years ago!)  Materials included such things as brass, lead, balsa wood, ABS plastic, factory pear wood, concrete, etc.

I found some surprising things:
- The spectrograms of different reed plates on the same material were as different from each other as were the spectrograms of radically different materials.
- The energy in the first overtone (fundamental x 2) was always greater than the energy in the fundamental.

Making the voiceprints is easy. Associating differences in the voiceprint with subtle details of harmonica design….not so much.   I never got much beyond the “Yep, that’s a harmonica” stage.
I showed unidentified spectrograms to people at SPAH and no one could sort them by comb material.

Good luck and have fun.  Keep us informed of your findings.

Vern
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