Something along those lines did eventually occur to me, in a vauge, half-formed way, when I started wondering which overtones added up to each of those two waveforms (and not expecting it to be as easy to find my trial-and-error (and guessing) as the y = sin(θ) + sin(2×θ+π/2) for the two-notes-on-one-string analysis from a couple months ago (http://dglenn.livejournal.com/919887.html) -- maybe FFT would have come to mind more quickly if I'd worked with Fourier transforms before instead of just reading about them once in a while. First step, I suppose, is 'man -k fourier ; man -k fft' to see whether I've already got tools to do the magic for me without my having to bother reading up on the math. :-)
(no subject)