The berimbau produces a rich blend of pitched, harmonic sounds (sounds whose vibrations follow the ratios of the overtone series), and percussive sounds without identifiable pitch. The image below shows a detail of a sonogram of the beginning of the toque Angola on CD track 5. The four lines at the bottom of the figure signify that the second tone above the fundamental is the strongest partial (at an octave and a perfect fifth above the fundamental), followed by the third overtone, which lies two octaves above the fundamental. The fundamental and first overtone are relatively weaker. Then there is a gap in the partials, followed by several of the higher overtones, which fill in tones that correspond to the 2nd, 3rd, and other intervals above the fundamental. Higher still is the "noisier" (less harmonic) sound of the [i]caxixi[/i].
