If we repeat the invention of the Lumiere brothers and try to split a certain piece of music into “Frames”, each lasting 40 milliseconds. That is, as in ordinary cinema, to give a “sound picture” with a frequency of twenty-five frames per second. Will our auditory perception of this piece of music change? Will it sound different by ear?

I think so! And even VERY MUCH!

It all depends on the presence of a large number of low-frequency vibrations in it. Frequencies in the range from below 25 Hz will not fit into a “frame” lasting 40 milliseconds at all. Anyway, low frequencies will be greatly “cut off” by such frame-by-frame transmission. A sound frequency of one hundred hertz, for example, will be able to “place” only four vibrations in one “frame”. WILL we be able to capture it at all? One “frame” is unlikely! But a few in a row, maybe we’ll catch something. High frequencies will be perceived relatively well, because several tens and hundreds of such periods will be placed in the “frame”.

But why is it necessary to take a frame-by-frame scan copied from a visual movie? You can also play with lower frame rates. For example. five, ten, twelve, fifteen “frames” per second, because, say, organ fugues and preludes should be performed at the lowest frame-by-frame frequency.

Actually, it’s interesting WHAT we’ll hear if we put two high frequencies in ONE frame that differ by half an octave or a whole one. Half a frame of one, then half a frame of the other. Of course, without “mixing them” – one period of one frequency, the next one is another.

(Octave – twelve sounds of the chromatic diatonic scale, , where the extreme sounds differ in frequency by two times. And the “Do” of one octave differs in frequency from the “Do” of the adjacent one exactly twice. We hear the SAME tone, only either higher or lower, but we know by the sound that it is the SAME NOTE “Do”! Similarly with any other sheet music.)

Today’s technology can easily reproduce such a sound movie with any set of frame-by-frame scans.

However, maybe someone has already thought of such a simple idea?

Faciant meliora potentes.

3 VII 2025