How can I read a spectrogram like this?

I want to know: what information can I read from this spectrogram?

Answer 1

[Jan]

At first you can see, that this is a violin concerto of Alban Berg. The spectrogram shows 6 seconds of the sound after a fourier transformation. The y axis is the pitch level, the x axis the time and the power of the frequencies is displayed as color - most likely red for high power and blue for low power. Actually there should by a colormap to define the absolute values.

On the bottom there are some strange marks, perhaps a three-quarter time.

Did you search in the net for explanations already? Maybe WikiPedia: Spectrogram can explain this better than me.

Answer 2

[Star Strider]

It displays the fundamental and harmonic (overtone) frequencies of the violin playing the music as a function of time. Lower frequencies are in the lower part of the plot, with higher frequencies toward the top. You can see the frequency characteristics of that particular instrument in the patterns of the harmonics.