Reading Response (based on: Helmholtz Ch 3)
This is a fascinating article from Helmholtz's famed theory book, "On the Sensations of Tone." In this particular section (Chapter 3), Helmholtz discusses the concept of, as he describes it, "sympathetic vibrations." As the name of his book implies, Helmholtz certainly has a particularly scientific perspective on music theory, emphasizing the physiological factors that go into constructing his theories. Helmholtz summarises an aspect of these sympathetic vibrations as such:
"When the pitch of the original sounding body is not exactly that of the sympathising body, or that which is meant to vibrate in sympathy with it, the latter will nevertheless often make sensible sympathetic vibrations, which will diminish in amplitude as the difference of pitch increases"(Helmholtz, 39).
What I found particularly interesting about this piece was Helmholtz's experimentations which he paired with his theories. As a scientist and musician, his experiments are deeply grounded in physics, which, for me, adds a new level of understanding on sound and human perceptions of sound. After reading this chapter, I was interested find a video of some of his experimentations. The below YouTube video shows one such demo (please excuse the somewhat poor quality of the video).
This video shows an adaptation of Helmholtz's experiment on p. 40 of the book. The experiment contains two tuning fork apparatuses, comprised of the fork bolted onto a hollow box. If each of these tuning forks contain the same frequency, then (if facing one another as shown in the video), both will vibrate when one is hit.
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