Harmonics from the Land of Son

Musical educational application. Explore Harmonics and create your own sound

This educational game on musical themes familiarises children with the phenomenon of sound colour and its causes; it also allows them to create their own sounds of unique timbre.

Why does the violin sound different from the clarinet even when they play the same tone? This is because the sound that reaches our ears, rather than being a single tone, consists in fact of a whole company of component tones known as harmonics. This phenomenon seems strange and mysterious because we do not hear the individual harmonics. Our ears simply ‘add them up’ and present our conscious mind with the ‘sum total’ in the form of a sound characterised by specific timbre. Depending on which harmonic is the loudest, and which are more subdued, we hear the recognisable sound of a violin or a clarinet. Though our ears cannot distinguish the individual harmonics, thanks to our application this has become possible. ‘See’ the sound of a selected instrument, its unique configuration of harmonics; listen and play. Check what an individual harmonic or a chosen group will sound like once you have changed their volumes. Will a clarinet lose its identity? Can it transform into a piano or sound like a trumpeting elephant? Or perhaps you wish to build your own sound timbre completely from scratch? We invite you to join our crazy game and create new sounds!

The app has been conceived as a complement for the educational children’s book Harmonics, which is part of the series Sonia in the Land of Sonoroos. The title heroine gets to know various sound phenomena through meetings with fabulous creatures from the land of sounds. In the story the harmonics are represented as strange little manikins; hence the way they have been visualised in our app. The series includes, apart from Harmonics, also two other booklets: Glissando and Ostinato, each accompanied by a mobile app. We invite you to get acquainted with these publications.