In sonic branding, much thought and effort goes into finding the perfect sounds to fit a brand’s style. Part of this process involves breaking these sounds into their essential ingredients and critiquing them: “That trumpet is a shade too mellow. Can we find one with more punch?” or “We need to decide if we want a brighter voice or a darker voice.”

Every musical detail counts in the advertising world. Think of the Intel Inside sound, one of the most memorable audio logos of all time – only three seconds long. Creator Walter Werzowa needed a keen ear to carefully design each sound. In the first note alone, he used over 20 different instruments and sounds!

Listen to the Intel sonic logo

Did you hear the anvil, tambourine, and electric spark? If you’re like most listeners, probably not (we’ll get to the reason for this later). But Werzowa hand-picked each of these sounds for a reason. He knew their unique sound “flavours” and was able to mix them perfectly into a memorable audio logo.

We can all tell when an instrument sounds right or wrong in a certain context. This is the “I’ll know it when I hear it” approach, which drives many sound branding decisions. But when it comes down to a few seconds of sound design, it’s important to understand why an instrument sounds mellow, punchy, bright, or dark.

With a little science and an open ear, we’ll explore some of the basic “spices” of sound undiscovered by the average listener – overtones.

Can you sing more than one note at the same time?

Tuvan musician Kongar-ol Ondar employs an age-old Tuvan tradition of overtone singing to sing two, three, or four notes at the same time in this clip from the Late Show with David Letterman:

“How did he do that?!” you might be thinking. Let’s take a closer look at overtones –

When you strike a key on the piano, how many tones are you playing?

If you said one, you’re right…and wrong. Common sense tells us that one piano key produces one tone. In reality, each key has a bit more magic than that.

Let’s say you play a middle C on the piano. The main sound we hear is obviously the note we call “middle C.” But when this single key is struck, it also unleashes a surge of other tones, seemingly out of thin air. Due to the natural resonances of the piano string, different, higher pitches than middle C are produced: G, E, B-flat, D…the list continues up into the musical stratosphere.

These higher pitches are the overtones that tag along with every key struck on a piano, every breath blown into a saxophone, every violin pluck, every vocal “oooo,” and every gong crash. But we don’t normally hear these overtones, because:

1. Overtones are generally much quieter than their fundamental tone (middle C in our example), except in rare instances. Kongar-ol Ondar’s singing is unique, because he can manipulate his voice’s overtones so that they’re louder than the fundamental, droning bass tone.
2. Overtones and their fundamental tone arrive at our ear almost simultaneously. Since our brains tend to group sounds in order to make sense of the world, we hear all of these different tones as one note. This illusion explains why we heard 20+ unique sounds as one in Werzowa’s Intel audio logo.

So if we don’t usually hear these individual overtones, why study them?

Think of a delicious pasta sauce. The average taste-tester can say, “It’s sweet. It’s salty. It’s delicious.” But that’s about it. A good cook, on the other hand, can tell you exactly what seasonings were used, based on the flavours of the end product. A cook could then recreate this sauce exactly, or vary it slightly to suit any type of pasta dish.

Overtones are a little like the spices that go into a pasta sauce. A unique blend of overtones emanate from every instrument, giving each a deliciously different sound. These distinctive overtone flavours (or timbres) explain why the same note sounds different on a clarinet, an oboe, and a flute.

Just like individual spices in a sauce, individual overtones are difficult to hear, but simply being aware of these musical ingredients is one step towards becoming a good sound “cook.” In the end, that’s what sound branding is all about: knowing which sound spices create which musical flavours and emotions, to cook up the perfect sound for a brand.

Charlie McCarron, Sound Consultant
soundlounge

Overtones: The Secret Spices of Musical Sauce is a post from: soundlounge

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