How do you appreciate efforts of a musician to produce melodious sound using a musical instrument by simultaneously controlling frequency and amplitude of the sounds produced by it.

Quality or timbre is that characteristic of musical sound which enables us to distinguish between the sounds of same pitch an loudness produced by different musical instruments or different persons. The difference in the quality of two musical sounds produced by two musical instruments is due to the difference in the shapes of sound waves or waveforms produced by them.

Many of us might have seen the manjira (cymbals), the ghatam, and the noot (mudpots) and the kartal. These instruments are commonly used in many parts of our country. These musical instruments are simply beaten or struck .The figure below depicts these instruments.

When the musician plucks the string of an instrument, like the sitar, the sound that we hear is not only that of the string. The whole instrument is forced to vibrate, and it is the sound of the vibration of the instrument that we hear. Similarly, when musician strike the membrane of a mridangam, the sound that we hear is not only that of the membrane but of the whole body of the instrument.

The figure below depicts the Mridangam and Sitar.