Overtone Sliders consist of lines that each represent a specific frequency. The distance between the lines corresponds to the natural harmonic sequence of a given fundamental.
For example, in the image below the fundamental frequency is 110Hz. On the piano, this would be an A. Each harmonic has a frequency that is a multiple of the fundamental. Therefore, the second harmonic has a frequency of 2*110Hz = 220Hz, the third one 330Hz, and so on.
By default, octaves of the fundamental are drawn as red lines, while all other tones are drawn as white lines. If two lines of different sliders match perfectly, they are drawn as green lines:
This image shows two sliders whose interval forms a perfect fifth. The frequency of the second slider is exactly 3/2 times that of the first slider. Every third harmonic of the first slider matches every second harmonic of the second slider. No other interval except the octave and the unison has as many matching overtones.
Displaying Overtone Sliders
You can set the number of shown sliders on the toolbar, or under Options / Look and Feel. There you can also choose to how display the labels of each slider, and wether to show the note name and the frequency value.
Moving Overtone Sliders
The following table lists the various mouse commands that you can use to manipulate overtone sliders. Refer to Figure 1 for the various slider elements.
| Mouse action | Command |
|---|---|
| Click + Drag Line | Move line. The line will snap to the nearest tempered tone depending on whether that option is enabled. |
| Alt + Click + Drag | Move line, but with reversed snapping behavior. For example, if snapping is enabled, holding Alt while moving the line will disable snapping, and vice versa. |
| Shift + Click + Drag | Move line in 1 cent increments. This allows more precision than the normal way of moving. |
| Control + Shift + Click + Drag | Move line in 1/4 cent increments. This allows the highest amount of precision. |
| Double-click in empty space |
Move fundamental of slider to that position. This is useful when the slider is outside the visible range. |
| Click + Drag Overtone Sizer | Change the number overtones (or harmonics) that are shown for this slider. |
| Click + Drag Undertone Sizer | Change the number of undertones (or sub-harmonics) shown for this slider. |
| Double-click on Over- /Undertone Sizer | Reset number of over- or undertones to zero. |
| Control + Click + Drag | Move line and snap to nearest line on the slider to the left, or the slider that currently has the focus. This is very useful to construct specific intervals. For example, to create a perfect fifth, snap the second harmonic of one slider to the third harmonic of another. |
Selecting and Playing Slider Tones
The labels of the overtone sliders show information about the corresponding frequency and note, but they also serve as buttons that allow playing back the corresponding tone by clicking on them.
| Mouse action | Command |
|---|---|
| Click on Slider Label | Play the tone corresponding to the frequency of this slider. When the mouse is moved while the left button is held down, different tones can easily be played. Clicking on on a slider label will also set the focus to that slider. |
| Control + Click on Slider Label | Select or deselect this tone. The selected tones can be played with the Play selected tones toolbar button or keyboard shortcut. |
| Keyboard action | Command |
| Arrow keys | Move focus to the next label and play the tone for a short time. Using the arrow keys allows to quickly listen to the entire harmonic sequence of a given tone. It allows allows to play back the melody formed by the fundamentals of adjacent sliders. |
| Play selected tones (Return) |
Start playback of all selected tones. |
| Stop playing selected tones (Backspace) | Stop playback of all tones. |
| Deselect all tones (Ctrl - Backspace) | Deselect all tones. |
Comments
Overtones
Re: Overtones
The overtone sliders are only a visual overlay and display the theoretical frequencies of the harmonics in relation to the selected fundamental frequency.
At this time Overtone Analyzer does not automatically adjust the sliders, so what you see are always theoretical frequencies. The relation to the actual frequencies is purely based on a visual match between the slider and the peaks in the spectrum.
So to measure the overtones in your recording, you need to adjust the slider manually until it matches your measured frequencies. The program will be able to automatically adjust the slider in a later version.