Music is an intricate combination of sine waves. This is what 5 seconds of Autumn Fell looks like: |
If we zoom in to look at just .07 seconds (7/100 of a second) of this song, we find something that looks just like a messy trig function!
It looks similar to something I can graph on my calculator...
(Graphing window: x on [-15.58, 15.58], y on [-4, 4])
So, where do damping functions come in? They're used at the end of the song, where the sound "fades out!"
When the song's final mix is done, the producer decides if and how the song should be faded out. The process is all done by computer! The software used,SAW Plus in this case, gives the engineer three main choices:
1) Linear Fade 2) Logarithmic Fade 3) Inverse Logarithmic Fade (Remember that inverse logs are just exponentials!) |
This is how the end of Autumn Fell looks and sounds before it is faded: