resonance. AN EXPLORATION OF SHAPE & SOUND
All experiments

A LITTLE PHYSICS. A LOT OF POSSIBILITY.

Give sound a shape.

Pull an edge. Tap the surface.
Discover an instrument that only you could make.

THE LISTENING ROOM

Round study / 01

VIBRATION STUDY / MODE 05
tap anywhere to hear it
CLICK TO STRIKE · SPACE TO PLAYFinding its voice…
Finding its voice

The hidden harmonics

Tap a mode to see and hear one vibration on its own.

LOWER TONES12 VOICES, ONE SURFACEHIGHER TONES

YOUR SMALL COLLECTION

One shape. A whole orchestra.

Save a few voices. Play them together.
Use keys 1 2 3 4 to perform.

FIELD NOTES / 001

A shape has
more than one voice.

A stretched membrane vibrates in many patterns at once. Each pattern—a mode—has its own frequency. Together, they give your instrument its character.

01Shape changes sound.
We solve the wave equation on your outline. Pull the rim, and the vibration patterns and pitches are recomputed.

02Where you strike matters.
A tap excites modes at that point. Strike a still line in a mode and you will barely hear it. A soft mallet spreads the impact over a wider area.

03One model, two senses.
The same modes drive the sound and the visible surface. The motion is slowed and exaggerated so you can see it.

Inside the model & references

This is a linear membrane with a fixed rim, discretized on a square grid. The lowest 18 eigenmodes of its Laplacian form the instrument. Pitch follows the square root of tension and each eigenvalue; normalized canvas dimensions use a fixed wave-speed scale.

Sound is a damped modal response at a virtual contact pickup. This is an illustrative instrument, with no enclosed air, acoustic radiation, or large-amplitude nonlinear effects. The mesh, finite mode count, damping, and short attack limit the approximation. Modal frequencies are physical model results, not samples or generated music.

No account. No samples. Just your browser and a little physics.