this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
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Highly basic answer, let's say the strength of the vocals wave over time is:
5, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4
And drums is:
4, 0, 2, 0, 4, 0, 2, 3
Then you add them together for each time slice and get:
9, 4, 5, 2, 7, 4, 7, 7
And you put that on a record, or out to a speaker, and our ears are able to break that up into the two parts when it hears it. This is the same as when two things are in the room making sound, there may be two sources, but my ear only has one hole, and that hole has one eardrum behind it. The different sounds just add their powers together and hit my ear as one mixed wave.
Alternative answer: magic
Okay, I see this is very simplified, but an instrument consists of more than a strength? Given how many different instruments and voices exist - how many different individual waveforms exist? A flute should have another waveform than a saxophone and my voice is different to that one of your mother.
Definitely, but you only ever perceive all that because of the one-dimenaional way your eardrums vibrate, and they vibrate because the air next to them vibrates. If we make the air next to your eardrums vibrate in the same pattern they did when the band were performing, you will hear and perceive the same sound as the band made.
You should be aware that an amplified band is only ever making sound at you through a bunch of speakers whose only function is to vibrate air in a one dimensional pattern.
Separating that all out into different instruments and people and timbres etc is the clever bit, and your brain does that, not the speaker, and you largely learned it as a child.
This is fascinating. I never realized that sound is processed like this. Not that different from sight then, which is processing a bunch of electromagnetic frequencies.