HARMONICS • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Harmonics

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/hɑrmˈɑnɪks/ Listen

noun

Harmonics n.

The doctrine or science of musical sounds.

pl. (Mus.) Secondary and less distinct tones which accompany any principal, and apparently simple, tone, as the octave, the twelfth, the fifteenth, and the seventeenth. The name is also applied to the artificial tones produced by a string or column of air, when the impulse given to it suffices only to make a part of the string or column vibrate; overtones.

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Etymology of 'Harmonics'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Harmonics" Quotes from Famous Books

... the noble basilica held a gloomy congregation. Three small candles were alone lighted on the high altar. No sweet voices sang melodious anthems or exulting hymns. The monks, in hoarse tones and monotonous harmonics, chanted the penitential psalms. Here and there knelt a figure clothed in mourning robes, and absorbed in secret prayer; but over the majority of the assembly either blank despondency or sullen inattention ...

— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... this mail, please let him hear of my pleasure and admiration. How poorly - compares! He is all smart journalism and cleverness: it is all bright and shallow and limpid, like a business paper - a good one, S'ENTEND; but there is no blot of heart's blood and the Old Night: there are no harmonics, there is scarce harmony to his music; and in Henley - all of these; a touch, a sense within sense, a sound outside the sound, the shadow of the inscrutable, eloquent beyond all definition. The First London Voluntary knocked me wholly. - Ever ...

— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... been thinking about refining our own search sonar." Tom explained that the new system he had in mind would send out a complex pulse—that is, an underwater sound wave with many harmonics instead of a ...

— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon

... subtle task. He resolved the Acoustic Prism; he built the seven-runged ladder; he charmed the wandering Tones, and bound them in the holy laws of Rhythm. Divining the hidden secrets of their affiliations, relations, loves, and hates, he wrought them into gorgeous webs of harmonics, to clothe the tender but fiery soul of ever-living melodies. Soothing their jarring dissonances into sweet accord, he filled their pining wails with that 'divine sorrow,' that mystic longing for the Infinite, which is the inner voice of every created heart. If he could not ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... Faust, but all who hear their strains, The instrumental ballet is a fairy waltz, a filmy musical fabric, seemingly woven of moonbeams and dewy cobwebs, over a pedal-point on the muted violoncellos, ending with drum taps and harmonics from the harp—one of the daintiest and most original orchestral effects imaginable. So dainty is the device, indeed, that one would think that nothing could come between it and the ears of the transported listeners without ruining the ethereal creation. But M. Gunsbourg's fancy has accomplished ...

— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel