Overtones…trying to understand

DV-72 NT

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Overtones…trying to understand

May be a novice question, but I am trying to understand what guitar overtones are. Since I am not academically inclined I am not too interested in actual frequency formulas which I’ve found searching this subject, but rather a simple explanation of what overtones sound like when chords and notes are played. (Maybe a link with examples?)

I’ve never been too good at using commonly accepted descriptive terms in describing the sound of my guitars and in reading many reviews the term “overtones” (whether good or bad) seems to pop up. I think I have a handle on the harmonics (such as used in tuning or Steve Howe’s beginning of Roundabout) but how does it apply to chords?

It seems from what I’ve found is that overtones can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the listener. I just want to understand a little better when someone describes a guitar as having “wonderful overtones” or “muddy overtones” or "... overtones".

I’ve noticed lately that when I sneeze and my Guild DV is sitting close to me, the strings ring in a chime-like fashion (I do sneeze loudly due to a medical issue that requires me to “not hold back”, LOL). In fact, when I first started noticing this while in my basement I thought the doorbell upstairs was ringing. Have not noticed this at all with my Larrivée jumbo. Could this be related to overtones or something entirely different, ex.: strings, top vibration, etc.?
 

Rayk

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It’s the sneeze ! Lol

To quote “ a musical tone that is a part of the harmonic series above a fundamental note and may be heard with it.“

In a quiet room play some single note series on the G and E string letting the ring out . You’ll hear the Guitar ring out behind the note with the above discription, you might think it’s a Reverbish sound .

Think of it like angels singing along with you .

I played my Blueridge last night she’s a bestie in that department . Haha You might not identify it so much as angels when strumming heavy .

Each Guitar handles overtones differently what you want is balance not the runaway effect with overtones .

I’d like hear your Guitar , Audio man Audio lol
Sorry had to put that in there .

If your a instrumentalist like me overtones are the ticket , singer song writers tend to lean towards a more dryer tone like the Mahogany guitars offer . :)

What is the wood combo on your larrivee jumbo ?

Stings could effect overtones slightly but only differ from each other in their composition.

How the top is made along with the back and side wood help to create overtones .

The tops ability to vibrate and back and side woods ability to reflect the sound .

Hardwoods reflect sound and softer woods absorb them . So in a Mahogany Guitar the sound will be absorbed but know that’s not always the case as there’s some amazing samples of these softer woods that just stand out and outshine the normal examples.

In either case it comes down to build and matching the build with exceptional wood .

I believe my Blueridge is one such Guitar . Adirondack top rosewood back and sides with some awesome grain . She’s loud and vibrates like a paint shaker and she’ll ring for an hour lol no not really but for a very long time .
 
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DV-72 NT

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Thanks for your reply, Rayk! I think I've got an idea of what you're talking about when you refer to "angels singing" - I sometimes finger pick (pluck?) a few strings together up and down the neck and just let the sustain ring on for what seems like an eternity in awe of the tone. I have no recording equip. but will try to capture some video on my camera.

Both the Guild and Larrivée are sitka tops and rosewood back/sides, although the Guild is 18 years older. You mentioned your Blueridge "vibrates like a paint shaker". I've noticed how my Guild vibrates so much all the way up the neck that I swear my teeth chatter if I hold them close together :numbness:! Could be used as a defibrillator LOL.
 

kostask

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It’s the sneeze ! Lol

To quote “ a musical tone that is a part of the harmonic series above a fundamental note and may be heard with it.“

In a quiet room play some single note series on the G and E string letting the ring out . You’ll hear the Guitar ring out behind the note with the above discription, you might think it’s a Reverbish sound .

Think of it like angels singing along with you .

I played my Blueridge last night she’s a bestie in that department . Haha You might not identify it so much as angels when strumming heavy .

Each Guitar handles overtones differently what you want is balance not the runaway effect with overtones .

I’d like hear your Guitar , Audio man Audio lol
Sorry had to put that in there .

If your a instrumentalist like me overtones are the ticket , singer song writers tend to lean towards a more dryer tone like the Mahogany guitars offer . :)

What is the wood combo on your larrivee jumbo ?

Stings could effect overtones slightly but only differ from each other in their composition.

How the top is made along with the back and side wood help to create overtones .

The tops ability to vibrate and back and side woods ability to reflect the sound .

Hardwoods reflect sound and softer woods absorb them . So in a Mahogany Guitar the sound will be absorbed but know that’s not always the case as there’s some amazing samples of these softer woods that just stand out and outshine the normal examples.

In either case it comes down to build and matching the build with exceptional wood .

I believe my Blueridge is one such Guitar . Adirondack top rosewood back and sides with some awesome grain . She’s loud and vibrates like a paint shaker and she’ll ring for an hour lol no not really but for a very long time .

To start, Mahogany is a hardwood.

Secondly, softwoods reflect sound, too. Not as strongly as hardwoods, but they do reflect sound. Inside the guitar, the sound waves are bouncing between the top (spruce most of the time), and the back and sides.

Back to the main question. overtones are notes that are multiples of the note being played. The frequency can be twice, three times, four times, etc. higher than the original note. They are not as loud as the original note. There will be differences in the how loud each overtone is. You will get a "drier" sound from woods that have lower volume overtones, your wound will be "richer" is the guitar has louder overtones. The overtone loudness, and the time they take to fade out (sustain) is all based on a number of things, guitar construction (bracing), wood quality and type (top and back mostly with a minor contribution by the sides), the actual wood used within a species (mahogany, rosewood, maple, etc.), and a number of smaller factors.

Mahogany tends to be a drier sounding back and side wood, so it is preferred for fingerstyle/fingerpicking, where the notes are coming closer together (shorter sustain). It is also a "warmer" sounding wood, that is, it tends to have louder overtones at lower frequencies, while Maple has louder overtones at higher frequencies, so is considered to be a "brighter" wood. All of this is a general tendency, not cast in stone. Good guitar builders can manipulate their designs to get whatever sound they want (within reason). There are certainly a lot of players that are using rosewood back and sides guitars for fingerstyle, and many flatpickers who use mahogany guitars.
 
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Rayk

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Yikes ! Yes and oops and sun of a gun ! Hog is a hardwood !
Darn it man ! Even when I’m on a roll it’s always over the dang crumbling cliff edge ! Lmao .
Ah but the beauty of it all is it brings out the best of you folks ! Hahaha.
I stand corrected ! I now will have more Evan Williams cherry ;)
 
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adorshki

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I’ve noticed lately that when I sneeze and my Guild DV is sitting close to me, the strings ring in a chime-like fashion (I do sneeze loudly due to a medical issue that requires me to “not hold back”, LOL).


In the case of your sneeze, vibration transmission works both ways:
Not only do vibrating strings cause the top to move, but a vibrating top causes the strings to sound.
I first realized that when I noticed my D25 was picking up my voice and resonating. Tried singing a note into it and voila!, the A string started sounding right along with me.
Your Guild's top was being vibrated by the sound waves of your sneeze and causing the strings to vibrate too.

In fact, when I first started noticing this while in my basement I thought the doorbell upstairs was ringing. Have not noticed this at all with my Larrivée jumbo. Could this be related to overtones or something entirely different, ex.: strings, top vibration, etc.?
Yes those are overtones.
Overtones are caused by both direct string action or resonating frequencies in the guitar not directly created by string vibration.
620px-Harmonic_partials_on_strings.svg.png

The diagram above shows what's actually happening along the length of a vibrating string.
Every one of those "nodes" is producing a harmonic whether you hear it or not.
Inside the guitar, some of them cancel each other out (phase cancellation) and some of them reinforce each other producing that chime sound.
Rosewood is particularly efficient at reflecting those harmonics, creating a richer mix and allowing them to be heard more clearly.
And some of those frequencies are high and loud enough to echo back off the walls and create the impression of coming from outside the guitar.
The fact that your Guild does it and the Larrivee doesn't reflects differences in how frequencies interact inside the guitars.
Other factors will be string gauge, material, tension, whether they're uncoated or not.
My guess would be that the Larrivee would do it at a different tuning tension than the Guild, and maybe at a different frequency(s).
I also assume it's got a solid top like the Guild?
That's pretty important in broadcasting a good frequency range inside the body in the the first place.

Here's a more graphic illustration of actual strings in motion:
images

Visualize those waveforms interacting inside the guitar and producing even more complex forms.
If one of the strings was fretted then the spacing of the waves along the string would change too.

drstrangelove.jpg

And that, Mandrake, is why I use D'Addario EJ16's with an .025 G subbed into the set, and only D'Addario EJ16s with an .025 G subbed into the set, on both of my dreads.
 
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Rayk

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In the case of your sneeze, vibration transmission works both ways:
Not only do vibrating strings cause the top to move, but a vibrating top causes the strings to sound.
I first realized that when I noticed my D25 was picking up my voice. Tried singing a note into it and voila!, the A string started sounding right along with me.
Your Guild's top was being vibrated by the energy of your sneeze and causing the strings to vibrate too.


Yes those are overtones.
Overtones are caused by both direct string action or resonating frequencies in the guitar not directly created by string vibration.
620px-Harmonic_partials_on_strings.svg.png

The diagram above shows what's actually happening along the length of a vibrating string.
Every one of those "nodes" is producing a harmonic whether you hear it or not.
Inside the guitar, some of them cancel each other out (phase cancellation) and some of them reinforce each other producing that chime sound.
Rosewood is particularly efficient at reflecting those harmonics, creating a richer mix and allowing them to be heard more clearly.
And some of those frequencies are high and loud enough to echo back off the walls and create the impression of coming from outside the guitar.
The fact that your Guild does it and the Larrivee doesn't reflects differences in how frequencies interact inside the guitars.
Other factors will be string gauge, material, tension, whether they're uncoated or not.
My guess would be that the Larrivee would do it at a different tuning tension than the Guild, and maybe at a different frequency(s).
I also assume it's got a solid top like the Guild?
That's pretty important in broadcasting a good frequency range inside the body in the the first place.


Oh gosh your so hot when you talk like that !

And Rosewood crushes Mahogany on the hardness scale 😜 just saying . Brazilian takes the cake followed by EIR then Honduras all if built right , over tone bliss ! Hic *
 

adorshki

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Oh gosh your so hot when you talk like that !

And Rosewood crushes Mahogany on the hardness scale �� just saying . Brazilian takes the cake followed by EIR then Honduras all if built right , over tone bliss ! Hic *

And I wasn't even done yet.
But in fact hardness scale has nothing to do with whether a wood is defined as a hard or softwood, it's actually based on the pore structure of the wood.
From the usual source :

"Hardwood is wood from dicot angiosperm trees. The term may also be used for the trees from which the wood is derived; these are usually broad-leaved temperate and tropical forests. In temperate and boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostly evergreen. Hardwood contrasts with softwood (which is from gymnosperm trees)."..."The dominant feature separating "hardwoods" from softwoods is the presence of pores, or vessels.[1] The vessels may show considerable variation in size, shape of perforation plates (simple, scalariform, reticulate, foraminate), and structure of cell wall, such as spiral thickenings."..."As the name suggests, the wood from these trees is generally harder than that of softwoods, but there are significant exceptions. In both groups there is an enormous variation in actual wood hardness, with the range in density in hardwoods completely including that of softwoods; some hardwoods (e.g., balsa) are softer than most softwoods, while yew is an example of a hard softwood."

D'Addario EJ16's make mincemeat of balsa, by the way.
 
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Rayk

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Ah ! Never said hog was a soft wood .... err did I ? The point was softer like charmin vrs mankill 80 grit butt wipes . Dryer certainly was the better word to use but then you need lotion so .... yeah in the end we all want ... err ...yeah
Overtones , think I was on the right path there .
 

Rayk

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To be fair, no, you didn't.
But just to make sure you read the lesson, is eucalyptus a hardwood or a softwood?
Support your answer with examples.

No I fail tests all the time but pass in the end err I think ? Anyway yeah it’s hard hehe but qawwali bears eat it the leaves all the time so the trunk must taste like sushi ... yuck !
 

adorshki

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No I fail tests all the time but pass in the end err I think ? Anyway yeah it’s hard hehe but qawwali bears eat it the leaves all the time so the trunk must taste like sushi ... yuck !

Hey, I like sushi.
But I was kinda hopin' you'd pick up on the fact that euc's the primary construction wood used for didgeridoos

800px-Didgeridu_and_clap_sticks.jpg


Y'want overtones?
Y'came to the right place....

"The vibration produced by the player's lips has harmonics, i.e., it has frequency components falling exactly in the ratio 1:2:3 etc. However, the non-harmonic spacing of the instrument's resonances means that the harmonics of the fundamental note are not systematically assisted by instrument resonances, as is usually the case for Western wind instruments (e.g., in a clarinet, the 1st 3rd and 5th harmonics of the reed are assisted by resonances of the bore, at least for notes in the low range)."
 
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Rayk

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Hey, I like sushi.
But I was kinda hopin' you'd pick up on the fact that euc's the primary construction wood used for didgeridoos

800px-Didgeridu_and_clap_sticks.jpg


Y'want overtones?
Y'came to the right place....

"The vibration produced by the player's lips has harmonics, i.e., it has frequency components falling exactly in the ratio 1:2:3 etc. However, the non-harmonic spacing of the instrument's resonances means that the harmonics of the fundamental note are not systematically assisted by instrument resonances, as is usually the case for Western wind instruments (e.g., in a clarinet, the 1st 3rd and 5th harmonics of the reed are assisted by resonances of the bore, at least for notes in the low range)."

Yeah but no matter how many raspberries I blowed .... ok yeah that sounds wrong but right in practice . I could never get one to sound right and before the ex took the one we had back I tired lol it was the land down under too !
 

DV-72 NT

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Wow! Thanks everybody for your input!
I threw together a quick and dirty video trying to illustrate what I was talking about in my OP. Maybe I’m confusing overtones with sustain, or maybe they go hand-in-hand?

Anyway, I hope I can get this video to post here. Since I have neither recording experience nor equipment, I had to use my still camera set on video mode. Please forgive me if this is too long and boring and please disregard the sloppy playing – I was just noodling stuff for illustration purposes. I set the camera very close to the guitar to make sure I picked up the audio and was too focused on not knocking it over. Plus my calluses kept snagging strings. (I know…excuses, excuses!)

***By the way, if you take a look at poser’s video then scroll up and down on Al’s harmonics diagram quickly, you get a momentary seizure :cower:.

Al: Ripper is the bomb! :applouse:

Sitka spruce top, EIR back/sides.
7 month old John Pearse New Mediums – phosphor bronze.

 

JohnW63

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For me overtones and sustain can be explained like this.....

Sustain: The same tone ringing on for a long time. Like electric guitar players hanging on that one note in a solo.

Overtones: Multiple tones playing nicely together to make the sound more interesting and complex. The difference between a note and a chord.

In general, people who play really fast, may not WANT a lot of overtones, because the more chord like sound steps all over those fast notes. They like clean, simple, good sounding notes. Again, this is a generalization and there is probably a wide range of simple and clean all the way up to massive overtone city that any player might like. Fingerstyle players often like overtones because it makes what they are doing sound richer and more musical and complex.

That's my Reader's Digest version.
 

davismanLV

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Good job, John. That's what happens. Sometimes it's a good and beautiful thing. Sometimes, not so much. My new Breedlove is the most resonant guitar I have. You can be saying something as you pick it up and it resonates and the strings sing just to the sound of your voice!! Now if it was doing that while I was playing it would piss me off. My direction to the guitar: "You play what I WANT you to play, not what you think I meant!! OKAY??"

And then there are HARMONICS, which is another thing..... especially with guitars.

Keep playing the DV-72, amigo!! Everyone that touches mine goes.... WOW!!!!

And I agree..... :encouragement::encouragement:
 

kostask

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Sustain exists on acoustic guitars. It is easiest to think of as how long a note takes from the time it is plucked to the point where it is no longer heard. This is a time based value.

Those players who play a lot of fast notes want a guitar with shorter sustain. Those shorter sustaining guitars may or may not have a lot of overtones (generally, many overtones usually result in longer sustain, but not always). Fingerstyle players may or many not want a lot of overtones, it depends on the music that they are playing. If they are playing with all fingers working hard, a shorter sustain guitar with fewer overtones may be best. If they are playing a slower piece where the guitar sustain is filling in the space between notes, a longer sustaining guitar, often with many overtones may be what is best.

There isn't necessarily any correlation between overtones and sustain. In most commonly available guitars, more overtones generally results in longer sustain. However, if you deviate from commonly available guitars, as in going to a ladder braced guitars vs. the common X brace, sustain is shortened, while the overtones remain.

As I have often said before, it is the overall sound of the guitar that is important, in relation to the music that is being played that is the end goal. Trying to say this guitar aspect (back and side wood typem or species of spruce top wood, as examples) or that guitar aspect ignores that, and it can lead one down a rabbit hole.
 
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