Voices
interfere.
Place up to six voices in the field. Horizontal is pitch — 80 Hz to 1200 Hz, logarithmic. Vertical is harmonic brightness — bottom gives you the fundamental only, a pure hollow tone. Top adds all eight partials, each at natural 1/n rolloff. The timbre thickens as you drag up.
When two voices are close in pitch, you hear beating — a slow pulse as their waveforms drift in and out of phase. The canvas shows this same phenomenon. The ripples are the interference pattern. With harmonics present, the interactions become richer — overtones from different voices create additional combination tones.
When voices form musical intervals — a perfect fifth, an octave — the connections glow with consonance. Dissonant intervals scatter. This is dual-reconciliation v3.1: one state tree, six voices times eight partials, two transducers reading the same 132 bytes.
When two tones at frequencies f1 and f2 sound simultaneously, you hear a beating at |f1 - f2| Hz. Below ~8 Hz, this sounds like a rhythmic pulsing. Between 8-30 Hz, it becomes roughness — the sensation we call dissonance. The canvas shows this beating as interference ripples between voice nodes.
Simple frequency ratios sound consonant. Octave = 2:1. Perfect fifth = 3:2. Perfect fourth = 4:3. The simpler the ratio, the stronger the consonance. The connection lines between voices detect these intervals. Bright = consonant. Dashed = dissonant. This is Helmholtz's theory made visible and audible at once.
Six voices, eight partials each. Twelve input parameters (pitch + brightness per voice). Eighteen output parameters (amplitude + phase + spectral brightness per voice). Plus master RMS and beat frequency. All in a single SharedArrayBuffer — 33 floats, 132 bytes. The AudioWorklet reads positions, writes amplitudes. The canvas reads everything. Same state, two interpretations. One truth.
Place two voices at the same pitch. Drag one up to add harmonics — hear the timbre thicken from pure sine to a rich complex tone. Now slowly separate their pitches. With harmonics present, the beating becomes layered — overtones interact independently. At a perfect fifth, consonance glows. The harmonic rings around each voice show exactly how many partials contribute. The visual IS the sound.