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Lip Oscillations

Lip oscillations make your classic kicks and snare drums sound louder and punchier.

When you say the letter { b }, you are simply making one sound as shown by this wave form:


When you do an oscillation (i.e. a vibration), you make more than one sound and two sounds are louder than one - this is why it sounds louder. Look at this wave form - see the distinct bumps?:


Also, the human ear interprets oscillations as having a pitch or a tone. Because your lips are vibrating at a low frequency or speed, your ear hears this oscillation as a bass note. This means by varying the speed of the oscillation, you can actually give your kick drums a bass note without needing to hum! This spectrogram of a lip oscillation shows a fundamental frequency of 57Hz (that's the big first spike).


Listen to this lip oscillation that is sounding at 57Hz (that's 57 cycles per second) - way lower than a human can hum. The computer tone takes over to highlight the bass note.

[jwplayer mediaid="20301"]

Here's an example of a { b } kick drum with a pitched oscillation. The oscillation starts off long to help you hear the note, then it gets shorter and shorter until you have just the { B } kick drum.

[jwplayer mediaid="20303"]

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