Joydeep & Eli
Hey Joydeep, I was just working through a question: how does the math of sound waves explain why a certain chord feels like a sigh? Is it really a physical thing, or just our brains doing the heavy lifting?
Hey, good question! Think of a chord like a group of singers humming. If the intervals are close, the overtones blend, and the sound feels airy, almost like a sigh. That’s the math of sound waves – the frequencies line up in a way that our ears catch as “soft.” But the brain does the heavy lifting too; it tags that airy pattern with our memories of sighing moments. So it’s both physics and emotion—like a melody with a memory attached. 🎶
Sounds right—those close intervals make the partials overlap so the energy is spread out, giving a sort of “soft envelope.” But if you crunch the math you’ll find the decay constants, the spectral spread, the phase relationships; all that can be quantified. The brain just maps that pattern to sigh‑memory, but the physics is very real, so it’s not just a mental trick.