Sound for keyboard players
Pitch, loudness and harmonics: the overtones you already play, made visible.
You already know sound from the keyboard side: you hear pitch, color and dynamics, and you shape them with your hands every day. This module gives that knowledge words and numbers, so you can design what you hear.
Every example was built and rendered in KiMiA. Work through the five lessons in order; each one ends with exercises at the keyboard and a short self-check.
1. Download the course patches below: one KiMiA bank for the whole module. 2. In KiMiA, open the ••• menu next to Sound library and choose Import a bank. 3. Select the bank file. Its nine sounds appear in the library as the bank KiMiA Course · Module 1 · Sound for keyboard players, all starting with “01 ·”.
You need KiMiA 1.0 or later, a MIDI keyboard, and headphones or monitors. Some examples, especially the low and high tones in Lessons 1.1 and 1.4, need good headphones or speakers.
- 1.1Pitch: what a note isExplain a note as a vibration with a frequency in hertz · Find any key’s frequency from octaves and semitones · Hear two notes slightly out of tune as beating14 min
- 1.2Harmonics: the overtones you already playDescribe a note as a stack of harmonics · Find the harmonic series of any key on the keyboard · Hear the harmonics inside a single note16 min
- 1.3Timbre: why a flute is not a violinConnect the shape of a wave to its harmonics · Tell harmonic, inharmonic and noisy sounds apart · Describe an instrument by its harmonic recipe14 min
- 1.4Loudness and decibelsCompare levels in decibels · Explain why the ear hears some frequencies louder than others · Hear how your touch changes the loudness14 min
- 1.5Seeing sound: waveform, spectrum and spectrogramRead the three pictures this course uses · Find pitch, harmonics and time in a spectrogram · See how a note lives: strike, bow, breath and organ14 min