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Information about Hum (sound)

A hum is a sound made by singing a wordless tone with the mouth completely closed, forcing the sound to emerge from the nose. To hum is to produce such a sound, most often with a melody. It keeps the volume at a low level, so humming is rarely used in musical productions, with some exceptions such as scat singing and vocables. Humming is sometimes used to keep the melody when the singer does not know the lyrics.

A hum has a particular timbre (or sound quality), usually a monotone or with slightly varying tones. There are other similar sounds not produced by human singing that are also called hums, such as a sound produced by machinery in operation or by an insect in flight. The hummingbird was named for the sound that bird makes in flight.

Slang Usage

Hummer is used as slang for a form of oral sex, where the giving partner makes a humming sound during the act, to add a source of vibration. Frank Zappa used hum as a pun in his song, Dinah-Moe Humm, with the reference being both to this slang usage and the hum made by a dynamo in operation.

Hum is British slang for stink. For example, "That is humming," would mean "That smells bad."

See also

  • The Hum - an apparently widespread phenomenon involving a low-frequency hum of unknown origin, inaudible to most people
  • Mains hum - an electric or electromagnetic phenomenon that causes a low frequency (50 or 60 Hz) audible signal.
Sound is a disturbance of mechanical energy that propagates through matter as a wave (through fluids as a compression wave, and through solids as both compression and shear waves).
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Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, which is often contrasted with speech. Contrary to common thought, air is not expelled with the diaphragm, but is inhaled using the diaphragm and exhaled or expelled, using the abdominal and lower pelvic muscles, as
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nose is a protuberance in vertebrates that houses the nostrils, or nares, which admit and expel air for respiration in conjunction with the mouth.

In most humans, it also houses the nosehairs, which catch airborne particles and prevent them from reaching the lungs.
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melody, also tune, voice, or line, is a series of linear events or a succession, not a simultaneity as in a chord (see harmony). However, this succession must contain change of some kind and be perceived as a single entity (possibly Gestalt) to be called a
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The volume of a solid object is the three-dimensional concept of how much space it occupies, often quantified numerically. One-dimensional figures (such as lines) and two-dimensional shapes (such as squares) are assigned zero volume in the three-dimensional space.
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Scat singing is a type of voice instrumental music. A scat is vocalized either wordlessly or with nonsense words and syllables (e.g. "bippity-bippity-doo-wop-razzamatazz-skoobie-doobie-bee-bop-a-lula-shabazz") as employed by jazz singers.
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In speech, a vocable is an utterance, term, or word that is capable of being spoken and recognized. A non-lexical vocable is used without semantic role or meaning, while structure of vocables is often considered apart from any meaning.
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Lyrics

For other uses, see Lyrical.


Lyrics are the words to a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit.
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In music, timbre, or sometimes timber, (from Fr. timbre; IPA /'tæmbəɹ/ as in the first two syllables of tambourine, or /'tɪmbəɹ/, like timber)[1]
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Monotone refers to a sound, for example speech or music, that has a single unvaried tone.

Monotone or monotonicity may also refer to:
  • Monotone (software), an open source revision control system
  • Monotone class theorem, in measure theory

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FreQuency is a music video game developed by Harmonix and published by SCEI. It was released in November 2001. A sequel, titled Amplitude was released in 2003.
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machine (derived from the latin machina) is any device that transmits or modifies . In common usage, the meaning is restricted to devices having rigid moving parts that perform or assist in performing some work.
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Insecta
Linnaeus, 1758

Orders
Subclass Apterygota
* Archaeognatha (bristletails)
* Thysanura (silverfish)
Subclass Pterygota
* Infraclass Paleoptera (Probably paraphyletic)

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Trochilidae
Vigors, 1825

Subfamilies

Phaethornithinae
Trochilinae

For a taxonomic list of genera, see:
  • List of hummingbirds in taxonomic order
For an alphabetic species list, see:
  • Alphabetic species list



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Frank Vincent Zappa[1] (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, musician, and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa established himself as a prolific and highly distinctive composer, electric guitar player and band
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A pun (or paronomasia) is a phrase that deliberately exploits confusion between similar words for rhetorical effect, whether humorous or serious. For example, the sentence "the world is perspiring against me" is a pun on the paranoid's motto "
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A song is a relatively short musical composition. Songs contain vocal parts that are performed with the human voice and generally feature words (lyrics), commonly accompanied by other musical instruments (exceptions would be a cappella and scat songs).
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electrical generator is a device that converts kinetic energy to electrical energy, generally using electromagnetic induction. The reverse conversion of electrical energy into mechanical energy is done by a motor, and motors and generators have many similarities.
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odor or odour (see spelling differences) is a volatilized chemical compound, generally at a very low concentration, which humans and other animals perceive by the sense of olfaction. Odors are also called smells, which can refer to both pleasant and unpleasant odors.
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The Hum is a generic name for a series of phenomena involving a persistent and invasive low-frequency humming noise not audible to all people. Hums have been reported in various geographical locations. In some cases a source has been located.
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Electric hum, mains hum, or power line hum is an audible oscillation at the frequency of the mains alternating current, which is usually 50 or 60 hertz depending on the local electric utility configuration (see Mains electricity).
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