The Octave Spiral - Overtone Visualization

by Skye Løfvander

Feb 23, 2016

The octave spiral is a structure that clarifies the ratios of the harmonic series. It illustrates something essential and universal, so it is obvious for anyone to try to understand and experiment with this pattern - first and foremost singers and musicians.
Marco Gianotta has made his design and programming expertise available for the project.
The program will not work in Internet Explorer, but in Edge and other modern browsers.
You can find it here: http://suonoterapia.org/overtones/

  • Harry Smit

    First, a very special visualisation of the overtonescale! But I don't understand completely what is the meaning. When I Click on the question mark, ther are only 2 out of ten explanation signs. Can you tell me how I can see the other 8. Thank you so far! Harry Smit

    Feb 24, 2016

  • M. L. Giannotta

    When you are at the second step, you need to click to the middle circle to proceed.

    Feb 24, 2016

  • Skye Løfvander

    Your questions are very welcome, so feel free to ask about anything which is unclear - it may also help us improving the presentation!
    Further explanation:
    Each of the circles represent a partial tone of the harmonic series: The one in the center is the first partial, also known as the fundamental. By following the spiral outwardly, the partials 2, 3, 4, ... etc. follow. So their frequencies will be multiples of the fundamental frequency. The last partial in this representation is 16 which is four octaves above the fundamental.
    1-2-4-8-16-... represent octaves of the fundamental (at the 12 o' clock position)
    3-6-12- ... represent octaves of the perfect fifth (at 210.6 degrees of the circle)
    5-10- ... represent octave of the just major third (at 115.9 degrees of the circle)

    Feb 24, 2016