Matlab Sound of Music

Matlab can be used to create signals that can mimic the sound of a musical note, which can be used to play the tune of a song. Each note of a song is created by individual sin waves at a frequencies for each note. The following line of music has three different notes, C D and E.

Each of the three notes in this piece have their own unique frequency. C has a frequency about 261.63 Hz. D and E notes are created by multiplying the C note frequency by a factor to create a new note. For D the factor is 9/8 and for E the factor is 5/4.

A sine wave when played without an envelope would create a constant volume sound. However, when striking a piano key the sound is at first loud and then fades as time goes on. To replicate this effect in matlab, the sine wave can be multiplied by a negative exponential coefficient. The following code creates the song above in matlab.

function doremi()
 
x = 261.625565; %frequency of C 
 
delta = 1/ 8126; %step used for note vectors
 
notelength = 1; %how long each note is played 
 
%creates vectors for note length intervals 
 
tquarter = 0 : delta : 0.25*notelength; 
 
thalf = 0 : delta : 0.5*notelength;
 
tthreefour = 0 : delta : 0.75*notelength;
 
ttwice = 0 : delta : 2*notelength;
 
%creating the sin waves for each note in the song 
 
do = exp((-1)*tthreefour*3).*sin(2 * pi * x * tthreefour);
 
ad = exp((-1)*tquarter*3).*sin(2 * pi * (9 * x / 8) * tquarter);
 
deer = exp((-1)*tthreefour*3).*sin(2 * pi * (5 * x / 4) * tthreefour);
 
ac = exp((-1)*tquarter*3).*sin(2 * pi * x * tquarter);
 
fe = exp((-1)*thalf*3).*sin(2 * pi * (5 * x / 4) * thalf);
 
male = exp((-1)*thalf*3).*sin(2 * pi * x * thalf);
 
deer2 = fe;
 
%concatenating song to one vector
 
song = [do, ad, deer, ac, fe, male, deer];
 
%plays song
 
sound(song, 1/delta)

Audio file of song

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Ph.D. 2007, working on developing cool imaging technologies for digital cameras, camera phones, and video surveillance cameras.

Buyue Zhang