Spectrograms of several music styles compared
To understand the ideal division of frequencies in music, I first decided to find a way to make a spectrogram myself, using the online spectrogram maker by Musiclab Chrome Experiments to compare four different pieces.1234
The first two examples are what one would expect in this research: a piano trio and a Hammond organ trio, both in the traditional meaning among jazz musicians and listeners. I chose the first two pieces because they are both typical jazz trios representing this research. The third example is French impressionism at its finest and the last one is a very loud and fast death metal tune. I chose these pieces because I wanted to see if works from a vastly different genre will show similarities in their spectrogram. And they do.
2 Peter Bernstein, Larry Goldings and Bill Stewart, “Sublime Indifference,” Earth Tones, Criss Cross Jazz, 1998.
It is remarkable how these four examples have one thing in common: a slightly over-presented portion of low frequencies (red and yellow), a moderate portion of middle frequencies (green), and an under-presented portion of high frequencies (blue). A striking difference in between the four examples is that the Hammond organ trio and the piano/violin/cello trio show layers in their spectrograms, meaning some frequencies are missing throughout the spectrum resulting in a more “open” or “broad” sound, while the jazz piano trio and the piece of death metal show a very consistent spectrogram resulting in a more “massive” sound. This is definitely audible. What also stands out is almost an overkill of low frequencies in the Hammond organ piece at the bottom left, which disappears when looking to the bottom right. This can be explained by looking into both instruments handling the harmonic series differently.
