All assessment

Analyse

Tone Autopsy

Analyse an existing guitar sound using only what the first four weeks have covered — and say which of your claims are evidence and which are guesses.

The first four weeks gave you a vocabulary for guitar sound that doesn’t depend on adjectives like “warm” or “bright”. This assessment asks you to actually use it: take a real recorded guitar sound and work out what is physically happening in it, using evidence rather than impressions.

The task

Choose (or, if one is provided, use) a short recording of an electric guitar. Analyse it in terms of:

  • fundamental frequency — what note is being played, and how does the pitch estimate move over the note’s duration
  • harmonic spectrum — which harmonics are present, and how their relative strength changes across the note
  • transient characteristics — what the attack looks like, and how quickly and in what shape the sound decays
  • pickup position and likely guitar-electronics effects — what the spectral balance suggests about where the signal was picked up and how it may have been shaped before it left the guitar
  • basic filtering — any obvious high- or low-frequency emphasis or attenuation
  • evidence visible in the waveform or spectrum — point to the specific feature of the plot that supports each claim you make

For every claim, say explicitly whether it is a direct observation (read straight off the waveform or spectrum), a scientifically supported interpretation (an observation plus a principle from Weeks 1-4), or an uncertain assumption (a reasonable guess you can’t fully support from the signal alone).

Important constraint

You are not expected to analyse distortion circuits or amplifier behaviour — those haven’t been taught yet at this point in the course. If the sample shows obvious nonlinear distortion or amplifier coloration, it’s fine to note that it’s present and out of scope for this analysis, rather than attempting to explain its mechanism.

Skills assessed

Observation; spectral reasoning; use of physical principles; clear technical explanation.

The spec

The brief poses the problem and leaves room for a response. The spec is the fixed part: what a marker checks. Some lines can be checked mechanically; the rest call for judgement.

  • the sound sample under analysis is named and reproducible by the marker
  • every claim is labelled as an observation, a supported interpretation, or an assumption
  • the analysis draws only on Weeks 1-4 ideas — fundamental frequency, harmonic spectrum, transient shape, pickup position, basic filtering — not distortion or amplifier behaviour taught later

How it is marked

  • Observation and use of evidence25%
  • Spectral and physical reasoning35%
  • Separating observation, interpretation, and assumption20%
  • Clarity of technical explanation20%