Sound waves

I have acuired a osciloscope from my pre-engineering class teacher! A osciloscope is a device that allows me to measure circuits and electricty running through those circuits but in my case one use is to measure sound waves! Though normally you have to put the extension that records and sends the sound in a wire, i have actually found that by simply jamming it into my head phone slot on my guitair amp it will measure the sound waves fine! Haha though not done by the books necasarily it gets the job done! I can now record the sound waves of my electric guitar, it seems the higher the note the larger the Y axis jumps. Along with that if i as distortion or a effect to to the sound it can radicly change the the wave length. I will update the blog soon with more information regarding this once i have finished my research!

(Oscilloscope on the right side of paragraph)

How electric guitars work!

The change from acoustic guitars to electric guitars was a huge revolution espiacally for jazz musicians looking to amplify their sound! The first one to be made was by Adolph Rickenbacker in 1931 (seen on the right.) It was a hollow body guitar with sound holes punched in. It used electromagnetic pickups to work. An electromagnetic pickup worked by having a magnet positioned above 1000,s of fine copper strung coil. When you change a magnetic field if the presence of a closed loop system of metal was nearby it would create an eletrical feild withing that coil. So how a electric guitars pickups work is simply this. The guitar strings are attracted to the magnet below them (Above the pickups) and when you pluck a string it creates a change in the magnetic feild because its chasing the string, as this happens a electrical feild is produced in the copper wire below the magnet and is detected by the pickup, the pickup sends a signal to the amp, which then sends it to the speakers and then produces the sound that you hear when you play your guitar!

First week- Day3

Oscar Wilde Statue

I have been working on my project for 3 days now. I've learned how to graph sin and cosine with sound waves to show a frequency which is important towards my mathematical aspect of the project. I've chosen a qoute to use by Mr. Oscar Wilde. Oscar Wilde states, "Most people are other people. Their thoughts some one else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a qoutation." I've identified key points of the quote and i have started writing potential lines for a song in which I will expain the quote (For english obviously).

In terms of music, A large portion of musicians like to simply cover over bands music. To cover means to copy, It isen't their own sound. Some musicians might not copy a song competely but might take licks and rythms from other songs and use them in their own song. It isen't really their passion put into the song but some one elses.