The tone of a musical instrument consists of many frequencies resonating together.  The actual note is identified as the most prominent frequency, and all the other frequencies are the overtones making up the harmonic series.  The focus of my project was to compare the power spectrum of one note on a flute played by three different players, and one player playing 4 different flutes.  I used an A at 440 Hz.  I also compared the power spectra of different octaves of A and B, in addition to other factors such as distance from the microphone, and a note with and without vibrato.  I found that the flute player has a greater effect on the resulting harmonic series than does the instrument.  My data also shows that the lower notes have more overtones present than do the high notes.  The measurement uncertainty was less than 0.3% of each frequency.
 

Introduction
Experimental Setup
Results
Discussion
Conclusions
References