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Answer in brief · Q3

Q.What are harmonics and overtones?

Maharashtra MsbshseTextbookSubjectiveImportance★★★★★
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As defined in section 6.7, once a string or air column's boundary conditions fix its natural frequencies (normal modes), the LOWEST such frequency is called the fundamental frequency (or first harmonic). Any HIGHER frequency that is actually present in the resulting sound is called an OVERTONE -- overtones are always numbered in the order they occur, so the first (lowest) one above the fundamental is the first overtone, the next is the second overtone, and so on. The term HARMONIC is reserved specifically for the case where a particular overtone's frequency happens to be an exact INTEGER MULTIPLE of the fundamental frequency (2n,3n,4n,…2n,3n,4n,\ldots). For both strings and air columns studied in this chapter, every overtone that does occur happens to be an integer multiple of the fundamental, so 'overtone' and 'harmonic' can be used almost interchangeably here -- but this equivalence is not automatic in every physical system, and even here …

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