SUBHARMONIC Music (Anomalous Low Frequency Vibration) 

Fun fact, you can actually lower your voice an octave in singing using a technique called, well, subharmonic singing.

I really do appreciate that tab in 4:27

Your videos are like the Vsauce of the music world.

Thank you for the guitar tab, I would've been lost!

Damn I remember if 5th grade playing hard and getting "cool sounds" on my violin... did I accidently find undertones? ?

To clarify your initial statement: Subharmonic ORCHESTRAL music was thought to not exist. Subharmonic VOCAL music has been used for decades to hit super low notes (first, zero, and negative octaves).

Hi Adam. The phenomenon you're describing, is basically what happens when you play your five string bass on a rig that can't reproduce notes below, say, 50 Hz but the low B still sounds deep and full.

Holy fucking shit this blew my mind when you did the overtones in the computer program. By the way, you say it's supposed to be quiet but to me it's extremely loud.

I subscribed as a bassist, but in my day job I'm an acoustic engineer and these videos are... resonating with me on so many levels :D

I want a full version of "Hey man, you gotta check out some of this stuff!".

Nice video. One thing, when he says that this lower frequency just exist in our head and not in the frequency analyser, if you record the sound from your speakers with a mic and analyse it, you will have the lower note appearing. It happens physically as it is mentioned before in the video !

THANK YOU for mentioning Harry Partch in this video! subject matter necessitated it. much respect.

Best explanation I have heard so far about 'implied fundamental tones'. I intend to watch all your videos.

That little piece "Hey man" at 0:26 was so amazing that i had to repeat it 20 times and it was still in my head to the rest of the day. Adam, it is a genius thing to compose such catchy thing with just 5 secs!!!!

Hey Adam, love your video! I wrote a paper on this very topic a few years ago which covers most of the same things you did. After some practice I was able to play these ALFVs on my viola and made some recordings to analyze. A quick frequency analysis showed that the ALFV really does produce a pitch which is infact lower than the strings fundamental. The raucous motion on it's own is a pitchless percussive sound but if controlled to have a periodicity it can produce a pitch. You can easily synthesize this by recording a short clip of the raucous motion and repeating it over and over again at different frequencies to hear different pitches. A violinist can vary the bow speed, pressure and contact point to find the 'sweet spot' to achieve that controlled periodicity of raucous motion and create a subharmonic frequency.

The reason you can reconstruct the fundamental in your head from only harmonics is that the interval between the harmonics is fixed and natural. Almost like if you see a projectile flying at a certain speed in a certain direction, you could infer where it was launched from from looking at its arc. This subharmonic series doesn't seem to be like that. It seems like in the case of the bow technique and the tuning fork on the paper, a lower frequency is being produced but it doesn't have a natural relationship to the fundamental; it's just a lower, arbitrary frequency being produced by unusual means. Like you said, the paper on the fork is just a way of dividing the frequency, but it's not a natural attribute of the sound. You can divide a frequency in half by just singing an octave lower, that doesn't give the lower note any special relationship to the higher one just because of the way it was produced.

Its time to make some Mysterious Kabbalistic Low Frequency Spectral Enigmatic Neo-post Ethereal Wave music

I watched this video as a break between studying for finals and I just have to say that this is an amazing video. You really explained the concept and theory surrounding it in depth within a short amount of time, and now I'm really interested to see if I can use it somehow. Anyway, I love your videos and am always excited for learning about some new musical concept. Keep up the good work!

Your videoes are so inspiring, and so well made! Thank you so much for making them

Very cool Adam, nice one. There was one article in Bass Player magazine, over a decade ago, where an orchestral double bassist gave a brief description of his 'subharmonic' technique which also relied on the bow grazing the string in very particular locations. The only other reference to this subject I've come across other than yours. Maybe this will ring a bell for somebody else who may know who the cat's name was. Thanks again, keep it coming.

I've heard the ALF efect called a Tartini tone (wikipedia: combination tone). You can sort of hear it when you play power chords, or on a woodwind if you growl the third or the fifth above the note you're fingering.

the color blind analogy is perfect. Watch videos on how we see yellow, on an rgb tv screen. Two waves combine, and where they meet, you get a phantom third wave.

By the way most people do in fact 'hear' the fundamental from just the overtone information. Many of us have been doing it for years. Every time we listen to a radio with little 4 inch woofers. We can quite clearly tell that an electric bass' low E is not the 2nd E. Even though the E on a bass is 42 Hz. and there is no 4 inch speaker that can duplicate this fundamental. Interestingly many world class audio mixing engineers (like Bob Clearmountain) mix on tiny (and sometimes cheap) near-field monitors that cannot reproduce lows but mimic playback systems in the real world. Great job Adam. I just found this channel and am an instant fan!!

I recently did a little experiment with some of my singer friends similar to yours with only the upper overtones. I started our lowest Bass on around a D or E, somewhere around there, and had the next person sing the octave above him, then the next would sing another 5th up, then a 4th, so on so forth with 10 notes of the overtone scale. After that I told the bass singer to stop singing his note, but the note he was holding did not stop. I actually thought he had missed my cue to cut off because the note was SO loud, but sure enough he backed away from the group and the tone was still there. It's absolutely mind-blowing to hear it happen in person.

when i was in my senior year of high school, the end of our physics class was the sound and light unit. i will always remember the exercise where everyone in the class got to hear pitches all the way from the lowest humans can hear to the highest, and i was the only one in the class who couldn't stop their muscles from clenching and body from wiggling. when i listened to all the high pitched overtones, i very much physically felt the low buzz of the C. magic does exist, and it's in the way we can listen to music with our bodies :)

Thank you Adam, this is the first time that I have heard of this ALF. This is fascinating!

I recommend checking out David Larson. He has a whole series of videos that explain how the subharmonic technique can be utilized with the human voice in the style of the Russian oktavists. It's amazing.

The tuning fork on paper reminds me of Cymatics, a phenomenon where, after a vibration is generated, different patterns of interference are (visibly) symmetrical on the flat plane. My hypothesis here is that the interference is based on the prong position and the bend in the paper, where the prong is vibrating fundamentally in 2+ tiny points of contact, resulting in a phase cancellation in an 1/2 octave series. The ‘undertone series’ you mention here could also be just that single 1/2 undertone with it’s own overtones being produced again, which is why you can hear it so well.

It also happens with the pick against guitar strings! Great video Adam! Keep it up. Zak

"Thanks for sticking around until the end of the video! This is where you can listen to the background music at full volume!" *Proceeds to talk over the background music for the remainder of the video* I love you Adam

I could hear that "ghost" fundamental C with headphones on! It's the same volume as the rest, but those upper pitches form a cluster that is so strident and overpowering. Fascinating. Thank you!

Those videos are so amazing, so much science and music at the same time!!!

As a musician who went through classical training through my bachelor's, the idea of some not hearing the fundamental when you played the overtone series starts putting a lot of pieces together about struggles I had that no one else did. With your example, I could sort of sense a buzz or sensation, but it is not a clear fundamental tone. In my studies, I always had far less struggle with dissonance than other classical musicians, I suck at any sort of sight singing (though honestly most of that is lack of practice and care), and I have a more difficult time picking things up by ear than most musicians I know, classical and otherwise. I don't think it is the only reason for any of these, or even a primary reason, but I wouldn't be surprised if it contributed to each in some way. A fascinating thought for me, at least.

I saw this video a few days ago, and it caught my attention. I was really interested. Now, earlier today, I was noodling around on my guitar at my desk and I found a way to recreate the "octave-below" sound on a guitar! I was playing and I noticed it sounded like it was filling up my ears a lot more than normal, but only sometimes, so I held really still and saw that the bottom of the guitar was gently touching my desk, and it sounded an octave lower when I played a string! I think the frequencies from the guitar strings resonate through the body of the guitar against the wood of the desk, and it adds an extra octave below your playing!

This reminds me so much of that kind of style of Tibetan Singing called Throat Singing, or Khargyraa, or Khaargyra (not sure which), where one takes a journey through the painful experience (I'm exaggerating a little) of turning a cough, or the clearing of one's throat, into a consistent note that can be played. They also have a type of singing for the overtone series, and it actually allows you to be able to sing two notes at once. Love these videos, and I applaud your memes with great awe. Bass!

Bro, I can't perform even the most basic musical feat. I listen to bands like Skinny Puppy and Ministry, but I always appreciate your videos. You explain, what seems like complex information, in a way that even I can follow. Keep it up!

Fascinating as always. I feel good about my self that I could hear the implied fundamental. I should probably find a better basis for my self esteem...

This is an awesome series. Basically vsauce for music

Fantastic video! Very impressed with the information you provided. Definitely got me thinking now :)

tab: -0- killed me

Wow. She has such exquisite touch. Thanks for sharing and explaining clearly. I find both the undertones and overtones fascinating to learn about though I still haven't incorporated it into my writing much. Pinch harmonics are fun to muck around with over chords. It makes me have an odd longing for a new type of bowed guitar to be built so there was a physical way to reach the (fake) undertone series on the guitar. If we can hear it it must exist. It is such a strange and interesting thing to know our brains sort of hallucinate a lower frequency that isn't picked up when analysing the sound. Thanks for keeping me entertained and curious whist increasing my knowledge again and introducing me to another amazing exploratory performer.

I got really excited when Harry Partch was mentioned. His music is insane and he made some crazy instruments

I've been singing subharmonics for years and never knew that Adam had made a video on this!

The theme lick to "hey man, you gotta check out some of this stuff" was so cool. Thanks.

I love these videos and also the music you produce. It sounds ethereal but I really appreciate there's probably some kind of experiment or mathematical theory behind every piece. Fascinating stuff!

Loved the video. Thank you so much for the links, saved me a lot of hassle!

Never noticed how much aliasing Operator produces! Great vid as ever Adam.

Really fascinating videos! Note for bass guitarists, if you pluck directly above the fret which is an octave up (on the same string) from any note you are fretting with the left hand you introduce a nice sub octave to your sound. Try it

This reminds me of subharmonic singing. When you talk about the frequency being produced between the proper way to bow a violin and the raucous motion, that's similar to subharmonic vocals. The undertone (usually an octave below because singers want low notes) happens when you mix normal chest voice with fry vocals. It's somewhere in that sweet spot and I've only been able to achieve it a few times. Interesting stuff.

Your lesson are amazing! I'm not a bass player (and not even strong in musical theory) but your explanations are very good and the physics basis strong.

Last year, I went to an acapella festival in which one of the teachers taught me how to use subharmonics with my voice. After three months, it worked. I am now able to hit notes up to two octaves lower than the fundamental frequency. I don't normally use it (because it can hurt my voice apparently), but it did benefit my group when I used it.

aha! i've been searching for this video (the part with the harmonics making you hear a non-present fundamental) for so long!

Just discovered this AWESOME channel. Thank you!

You actually blew my mind with that bit about hearing C just by listening to the overtones! Wow

Dear Adam and friends...This low note is called the difference tone. you can find difference tones just by finding the difference between two harmonics, for example: let's take the 2nd and 3rd harmonics of fundamental C (c and g). 3 minus 2 makes 1, so you should be able to hear the 1, the fundamental (C).. Try it with different harmonics, say 10th and 7th (E and Bb).. you should get the result 3, thus hearing the 3rd harmonic which is the 5th degree of C (G), which is pretty cool because you get something like a C7 chord, just by two sonic sources! ( G difference tone, E, Bb, and you can associate all of them with C because these notes come from it's haronic scale) You just have two be REEEAALLY exact with your JUST (not equal) tuning, otherwise it's not going to work. One can get really deep with that one, imagine having difference tones made of other difference tones... Also this is even possible to achieve with the human voice! (yes, for one person to sing 3 notes at once) If one has the abiity to throat sing (harmonic note singing technic mostly practiced in Mongolia) they can create a difference tone from the fundamental they sing, the harmonic they produce and the difference tone these two create. I have benn able to do this but it is really hard to always achieve because of the unstable nature of the human voice in terms of just tuning... just some info i've been into the last years!

This is why I have the DBX 120A Subharmonic Synth hooked up to my Cerwin Vega Subwoofers. As long as there are under tones in the program, you receive these subsonic frequencies. It's awesome and it's what audio engineers use in movie theaters...

suggested read: "multiphonics on the double bass" by Hakon Thelin. great video, thank you and keep up the good work

Tuvan throat singing has been around for a while, bro. Awesome stuff.

around 3:43 when you show the spectrum analyzer and PROVE what you're talking about I think it gives weight to the idea and by making this video you are helping me support my claims with some sort of evidence when I try to educate those who seek ideas from me. I talk about subharmonics from time to time and although few know what I'm talking about, even fewer than that believe me. So maybe this will help. Thank you

As I was listening to the demonstration of the tuning fork applied to paper, I thought, that kind of sounds like when I get a filling at the Dentist. The sound of the of the drill, the grinding sound of your tooth, and the vibration of your jaw into your skull, all working together in harmony. I'm not certain that this is the same phenomena of sub harmonies, but added a thought of beauty to an otherwise agonizing experience.

I'm a little bit disappointed that you didn't mentioned about octavists/basso profondo etc. but still, great video, I'm glad that I found your channel.

Also, you can make alot of "ALFV" with electronic instruments. Just generate something below hearing threshold with enough volume/energy and with such a colourful timbre (plenty overtones) and there you have it. Producing the undertones, though, that's basically impossible from a strict pov, as they literally do not exist materially, only theoretically.

THIS NEEDS TO BE VIRAL

Great, succinct & clear explanations anybody can follow of facts about music & physics. Thank you.

I don't totally understand what you are saying, but I enjoy it so much. TY

Hey man, I found this fascinating! As a Physics PhD student, this has so many parallels with my own research (Ultra Low-Frequency [ULF] waves in the magnetosphere). Nature keeps repeating itself!

I heard the C loud and clear when you played the overtones, even without headphones. Interesting!

I've been doing this on guitar for years. This lets you play notes *below* the lowest string. In drop-D tuning, a whole step down (a C) is heard if you play 5 & 3 on the D and A strings (the 5th and 8th of the C you hear). So there's an easier way of showing this than the tuning fork/paper method.

Your analogy of being able to lower your speaking voice an octave is actually true - bass singers use the subharmonic technique in singing to reach super low notes, I can do it too

Your videos blow my mind man. Thanks a lot for sharing all these knowledge. I seriously think I am becoming a music geek :-) and I love it. Grt work and keep it up

Mmkay, this is probably the first thing I had no idea about on this channel. Kudos Adam, kudos. (I studied theory at university myself)

if the violin is supposed to be playing an A @2:10 then the violinist should probs tune their violin lmao

Ok, I've figured out the perfect metaphor. Remember when you first learned to drive stick? You'd dump the clutch and the car would do that jerky thing and then die? No matter what, you can't reproduce that. You'll either drive fine or kill the engine, no middle ground. She figured out the middle ground...

this phenomenon is something I've actually pondered at length without doing any outside reading on the subject. so of course I didn't know that it is referred to as Anomalous Low Frequency Vibration. But here are some additional thoughts: because of Helmholtz motion, instead of a single excitation, the bow's action is a series of micro excitations, and as such they comprise a carrier frequency. that carrier frequency is optimally one that matches or supports the fundamental's resonance, but like a ring modulator, if you modulate the carrier, you modulate the mathematical result of the interference between the fingered note and the bow excitation. probably doesn't explain everything, but certainly describes the circumstances.

thank you very many muches!!!!! Love all those pieces of information pleeeaaase keep it going! :) thanks again!

I literally just discovered this by accident when playing my cello today. My thought is that not only does the string vibrate, but the bow hair can also vibrate. The low tone being heard when the right combination of bow and string resonance occurs. This is facilitated by both bow pressure and speed. (And probably several other variables I'm not aware of, such as how sticky the rosin is etc.)

@Adam Neely I am not sure why that is, but being a practitioner of strohbass (subharmonic singing), and looking at a spectrum analyser while doing it, my "implied" fundamental actually shows up. I don't have a tuning fork, but it might be worth doing the experiment with it : do the same thing, and look at that in the spectrum analyser. I'm guessing it's gonna show up, just like mine shows up when I sing. Because of that, I would say it's not just our brain that interprets and imagine a new fundamental ; it does, but it's also actually there (and I know the S.A. is not creating it out of nowhere either, or else it would create an implied fundamental when I'm singing in modal voice too, and it doesn't). Given the technique and how it works, I think there is, in the case of subharmonic singing, and strohbass in particular (it'll likely be different for kargyraa), a link with combination tones, because my vocal folds are vibrating at a perfect fifth (one at my fundamental, and the other at the 5th under, resulting in them only touching half the time ; I've verified this on an oscilloscope, too), so I'll re-watch your video on it because I'm not grasping it yet. I might be producing a combination tone/resulting tone, but it might be something else.

I was playing around with singing glasses in an Undergraduate Engineering course on waves and I found that when putting more force on the glass, it would produce a lower, noisier sound. In fact, the relation with the fundamental was very similar to the one in this video between the fundamental and the subharmonic of the violin string. It was very hard to analyse so I didn't focus on it.

Pipe organs do the whole overtones thing to get 32' and 64' pitches all the time. You have a stop sounding at 16' or 32' pitch, then add a perfect fifth above, either 10-2/3' or 21-1/3' and you get yourself a bit more bass. Some organs just have the quint without the foundation so that you can combine it with whichever pedal stop you do desire, but they serve the same purpose. What's really interesting though is that these are caused by the sound waves repeatedly reinforcing and cancelling out each other, producing a tone that is half the pitch of the lower sounding rank.

Hmm... I play the viola and this is something I've noticed, though I haven't really messed around with it. Now I have a reason to do so! Thank you! Also, Mari Kimura seems to be able to control what tone comes from her "subharmonic bowing" technique. This makes me think that the outcome tone isn't random at all, as it can be reliably created, but that we simply lack the scientific know-how to adequately explain the phenomenon. If anyone happens to read this comment, I'd love to hear any other ideas on this.

From what I understand, they use the phenomenon of hearing the fundamental from the harmonics to allow low frequencies to be perceived when smaller speakers that are less capable of projecting them are used. This kind of happens in the opposite direction though, where they use a harmonic exciter to amplify the overtones of the low frequencies. And that is how we hear a 30 Hz frequency out of little tiny speakers. But I also might be wrong, since I never really researched this on my own, so there's that.

Thanks for this video. I personally had so many arguments with ny professor about this, and him saying I was either hallucinating and lying. Can't wait to show him that.

You can actually do this with your voice! There are multiple ways of doing it too. The most popular ones being Kargyraa or Throat Singing and Subharmonic Singing. Throat Singing where the vocal folds and ventricular folds are being vibrated at the same time, creating the pitch that's an entire octave lower. Subharmonic singing relies solely on the vocal cords, where each flap is believed to vibrate at two different frequencies, essentially being an organized or "tamed" vocal fry. Both techniques have been used for a long time like in traditional Tuvan Throat Singing and Oktavism, but nowadays they even have more "modern" applications in music, notably beatboxing and acapella music.

A good way to hear the "implied fundamental" stuff is to simply highpass a complex waveform such as a saw wave or even a guitar or violin recording

What you show at 6:40 is very similar to the phenomenon that occurs with bell tones. I once saw a demonstration where the spectral makeup of a note from an upright (chromatic) percussive chime was played. The fundamental frequency did not show up, even though (at least as a musician) I was able to make out what that supposed fundamental note should have been!

You CAN use this subharmonics technique on your voice. Its very interesting, and it does produce a sound exactly one octave lower than the pitch you are actually singing (or speaking). If you know what vocal fry is, you can do this! Simply sing a note that is comfortably in your "low-ish" range, with your chest voice, or your normal singing voice. Then, gradually apply vocal fry, VERY VERY slowly. Keep starting with your chest voice and add vocal fry until the note becomes solidly vocal fry. At some point in this slow transition, your voice hit this subharmonic, but it was likely too fast to hear and just sounded like a "hiccup" of sorts. The technique is all about honing in on that small window of subharmonic resonance. Very fascinating!

The experiment in the end is mind-blowing!

We studied this stuff in Music Theory, and the professor, a violinist, gave us a demo. It was freakin' awesome.

FYI you can do this with your voice (not vocal fry or growling) but it takes a while to get the handle of it

Fun fact: tubas have an subharmonic in the 5th below the key of tuba. For example, CC tubas have a C as open note with C1 as fundamental and C2 as 2nd harmonic and under those two you have a strongly resonance at F0 and F1. It is about 2cents flat but it is the lips that you use to make it intune.

Educational and inspiring. Overall excellent presentation.

This is some crazy stuff. Great video.

Super interesting! Thanks for those videos!

I couldn't hear the fundamental when you played all of the undertones.... WHAT DOES THIS MEAN!?!?!?! Am I a broken human being? *throws himself from balcony*

David Larson is pretty good at this type of stuff, he does subharmonic singing all the time.

Yours is such a great public service! Thanks.

The mechanical system includes the bow and the string and therefore when the correct pressure is applied the player has access to the overtone and undertones of a virtual unit which includes their combined mass as well as the mass of the arm weight applied by the player therefore in considering the range of frequencies possible one must explore the various harmonic modes of that combined system and not restrict themselves to considerations based solely on string length, seems fairly straight forward to me.

Ok, I've just discovered your channel, it's awesome.

actually you can do something very similar to the tuning fork-on-paper thing w/ stringed instrument, you just need to pluck the string on the fret an octave higher than the one you are actually pressing down, this produces a OC-2 kind of effect

If you play the 2nd and 3rd harmonic, the sine waves add up to a function that repeats at the fundamental frequency. sin(2x)+sin(3x) repeats at the same frequency as sin(x).