Online sound to visual generator

The name

The syllables ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la come from an 11th-century Latin hymn. The monk Guido d'Arezzo used them to teach singing. "Solfeggio" is the singing method built on them.

The frequencies are a modern idea

The "Solfeggio frequencies" are not medieval.

• 1970s: Joseph Puleo claimed to have rediscovered six ancient tones.
• 1990s: Leonard Horowitz popularized them and extended the set to nine.

The nine tones in SeeSound

• 174 HzFoundation
• 285 HzRestore
• 396 HzRelease
• 417 HzChange
• 528 HzTransform
• 639 HzConnect
• 741 HzIntuition
• 852 HzOrder
• 963 HzAwareness

Traditional names.

A short history

1. 1680Robert Hooke (England) drew a violin bow along the edge of a glass plate covered in flour and saw patterns.
2. 1787Ernst Chladni (Germany) published the method in Entdeckungen über die Theorie des Klanges (Discoveries in the Theory of Sound). The patterns are called Chladni figures.
3. 1808Chladni showed it at the Paris Academy with Napoleon in the audience. Napoleon offered a prize for the maths behind it.
4. 1816Sophie Germain won that prize.
5. 1850Kirchhoff derived the correct plate equations.
6. 1909Ritz gave the first accurate solution for a square free-edge plate.
7. 1960sHans Jenny coined the word "cymatics" and photographed patterns in sand, powders and liquids.

How Chladni did it

• A brass or glass plate, clamped at the centre with a screw, all four edges free.
• Sand sprinkled on the plate.
• A violin bow drawn over the edge.
• A finger touched to the edge forced a still point and chose the pattern.
• No fixed frequency: the bow excites the plate's own resonances.

The modern version

A speaker shaker drives the plate at the centre with a sine wave. Our Cymatics plugin models this.

Why the sand makes the shape

The plate's vibration pattern exists with or without sand. Where the plate shakes, grains are thrown off. Where it is still, along the nodal lines, they stay put.

The formula

In its simple version, the plate is still wherever Z equals zero.

A real plate follows the Kirchhoff plate equation.

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Chladni
• physics.kenyon.edu/EarlyApparatus/Acoustics/Chladni/Chladni.html
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymatics

What is SeeSound?

SeeSound is a free online sound to visual generator that runs in your browser. It listens to audio and draws it live: a 3D landscape of the frequencies, a 2D line, and the sand patterns a frequency makes on a vibrating plate. The Hz and dB numbers on screen are measured from the sound, so you can read them like an analyzer.

Three ways to put sound in

• Load your tracks: click the upload icon and pick any audio file from your computer or phone.
• Connect a YouTube or Spotify tab: play your music in another tab, click the monitor icon, choose that tab and tick "Share tab audio". Works on desktop Chrome and Edge.
• Play a tone: click the tuning-fork icon and pick a Solfeggio frequency. No file needed.

Good to know

Nothing is uploaded. Your audio stays in your browser and nothing plays until you press play or pick a tone. On phones, use the upload icon, since tab connect is not available there.