Why Acoustics should be important to

musicians.

Sound waves
Sound waves are the visual representation of sound in all of its forms. Sound
waves are a longitudinal wave form that must pass through one of the three
mediums; gas liquid and solid. Most of the time we experience sound travelling
through the gas in the air around us.

There are three main parts that distinguish a sound wave, These are; The
amplitude, the wavelength and the frequency. The amplitude refers to how high
or low each compression/rarefaction goes, amplitude relates directly to the
intensity of a sound which also relates to the power of volume of a sound. The
wavelength refers to the length between the start of the compression and the
end of the rarefaction. The frequency refers to how frequently a compression and
rarefaction occurs in the sound wave. This is what compressions and
rarefactions would look like if you could look at a sound wave on a molecular
level.

Sound waves are Omni-directional do instead of looking like a two dimensional

wiggly line they would look more like this.

Wave Forms
There are four main types of wave forms.

Waveforms are the visual representation of how alternating current (AC) changes
over time.
Sine waves: Sine waves have a smooth repetitive alternating motion.
Square waves: In musical terms square waves have a much harsher hollowed
sound compared to sign waves.
Triangular Waves: A triangular wave sounds similar to a square wave but
sounds closer in character to a sine wave.
Sawtooth Wave: A sawtooth waves sounds like a crossover between square
waves and triangular waves.
Waveforms in Logic: When you zoom in on a waveform in Logic in an audio file
you can actually see that they are made up of lots for square waveforms
crammed together.

When you open up a synthesizer envelope. There are 5 sections to an envelope

of a note these are attack, hold, decay sustain and release (AHDSR). Altering the
different sections of the envelope will alter how you hear the instrument. For
example a violin has a long sustain whereas a cymbal or a drum has a short
sustain.
Sound waves travel at a constant speed and that is 344m per second, so if an
explosion went off 688m away you would hear the sound exactly after 2 seconds.
As we talked about earlier a sound wave works with compressions and
rarefactions alternation. A big problem for musicians when recording is being out
of phase, let me explain this for you. Imagine you are recording a snare drum
with a mic on the bottom and a mic on the top, they will have to be at the exact
same distance from the drum heads if not at the time when one microphone is
receiving a compression the other will be receiving a rarefaction and this would
sound terrible. If this problem is happening there are two ways of fixing this, you
could either adjust the microphones back into their correct positions of if the

microphones waves are exact opposites then you could simply flip one of them
around in Logic to create an exact pair, it is obviously a lot harder to get your
microphones in phase the more mics you are using.
When you listen to an instrument for example a guitar, youre not going to hear a
pure sine wave, because not only is that virtually impossible to replicate it would
actually sound rather boring. When the guitar strums what you are actually
hearing is the hearing is the harmonics of the note. This diagram is a
representation of what is actually happening.

One way that sound is measured in decibels (DB) this if a means of measurement
that measures the intensity of a sound, the higher the decibel the higher the
volume. An example of a decibel measurement would be the human voice, the
average volume of the human voice is approximately 70 DB and if you raised
your voice to a shouting level this would be read as 88 DB.

Musical Instruments
There are three main types of musical instrument, these are wind, string and
brass.
Wind Instruments
Wind Instruments have many different ways of creating vibrations and vibrations
are what make sounds. Some wind instruments operate with a vibrating read in
the mouthpiece such as the clarinet.

The Clarinet has quite a low pitch this is because of the read vibration and the
material that it is made of. An instrument that has a similar effect is the bassoon,
the bassoon is longer and larger so it has and even lower pitch.

These two instruments come from the woodwind family meaning that they are or
were made of wood. Some other examples of woodwind instruments are the flute
and the recorder; these two create vibrations by simply vibrating the tubular
body of the instrument with the air from the players mouth.
Another way that I wind instruments can create vibrations is by the player of the
instrument actually bussing their lips together in the mouth piece to create
vibrations throughout the instrument.

At the tip of the mouth piece it has a bowel like shape. This piece cups around
the lips keeping them in place as they create the buzzing sound. Some examples
of instruments that incorporate this technique are; the trumpet, the French horn
and the bugle. These instruments all come from the instruments family know as
the brass family. Brass instruments are typically used in an orchestral
environment but you can sometimes also see them used in pop music. In the
brass family the vibrations from the players lips work in conjunction with the
resonator to create the outcome sound.

In this chart you can see the frequency range of a trumpet, the highest being
1000HZ and the lowest being 50 Hz

When recording and instrument microphone placement is a very important

factor, this can very different fir every instrument so it is important that you work
out the the dynaic range of the instrument the musician is using. For a trumpet
this is 4-15khz which is the blue area in the diagram displayed bellow.

String Instruments

There are a variety of different string instruments out there and there are three
different ways that the strings are played, these are plucked, hammered and
bowed.
An example of a hammered instrument would be a piano. When you press a key
a small hammer comes down inside the piano and its the corresponding string,
this gives the note a very short attack.

An example of an instrument that is plucked is a guitar. A plectrum or finger is

used to pluck at the string causing it to vibrate and create the sound of the note
that the string is designed for. Due to this the sound of a guitar has a slightly
longer attach to it.

An example of an instrument that is played with a bow would be the violin. The
bow is rubbed along the strings causing them to vibrate. Due to this motion the
strings take a while to get to their full vibration speed. This gives the instrument
a very long attack.

Percussive instruments
Percussive instruments are very different to string and wind instruments in the
sense that they arent always tuned to a specific note, for example a snare drum,
they are designed t have harmonics that are pleasant to the ear but its couldnt
be used to create a melody. A lot of the time percussive instruments are used to
create the beat if a song but they can equally be used to create a melody with an
instrument such as a glock or xylophone.
Drums
The construction of a snare drum is usually a wooden circular body with two steel
hoops and two skins of different thicknesses, the thicker of the two being in the
top of the drum. Although some snare drums may be made of different materials
such as hammered brass to give you a different sound and feel. , the way that a
drum works is that when you hit the top skin with a drum stick this will give the
drum a compression then the energy will travel through the air in the drum to
the bottom skin giving it a rarefaction and then back up to the top skin again g to
create a the next compression to complete a full cycle.

The Human Ear

The human ear is one of the most intricate piece of biology in our entire body. It
starts off with the outer dish that you can see on the sides of our head. This is
known as the pinna, this is the outcome of millions of years of evolution and I
very specific shape to collect all of the incoming sound waves around it
effectively, much like how a satellite dish works. Is the sides of our heads were

flat with simple sound holes on then like most birds our hearing would work in a
much less effective manner.

The pinna leads into the external auditory meatus with is the tube in the middle
of the pinna leading into the head. This tube in 1 inch in length and 0.3 inches in
diameter. This is a very important piece of the ear structure, its job is to take the
sound waves from the pinna to the inner ear like a gas pipe.

The EAM leads to the tympanic membrane, this is the biological equivalent to the
diaphragm in a microphone. This thin membrane of skin vibrates with the
vibrations of the sound waves to send the signal to the next part of the ear.

The next section of the ear is the ossicle bones. This is a series of three small
bones that vibrate inside the ear cavity, these are said to look like a hammer an
anvil and a stirrup. These are among the most delicate bones in the human body
and are very delicate. They are the perfect shape and are in the perfect position
to serve their job effectively. As the tympanic membrane vibrates it sends these
movements through the ossicles to the next part of the ear in a split second.

The next section of the ear is the cochlea, this is a spiral shaped tubed filled a
liquid and lots of small hairs. When the vibrations pass through these hairs it
turns them into an electronic pulse is sent through the vestibular nerve and the
facial nerve.
Our hearing has certain thresholds such as the pain threshold and the amount of
decibels that we can endure. Our human limit for most people is said to be
around 4DB (100 HZ)

Psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics is all about how we interpret sounds inside of our brain and how
we can control them. A big part of psychoacoustics is HAAS which was
discovered in 1949 by Helmut Hass while he was studying for his PHD at
university. This principle basically means tat if there are two separate sounds
going into your ears and one is slightly delayed then it will sound like one smooth
note instead of two separate.

There is a very interesting part of psychoacoustics known as the cocktail party

effect. You have probably experienced this yourself, when you are in a room full
of different conversations and you can zone into a specific conversation and after
listening too it you wouldnt even be able to recall what other sounds were going
on in the room around you even though your ears are picking them up. Another
situation where you could apply this principle if you are listening to an iPod on
shuffle with the volume on quiet and having a conversation with somebody at
the same time you wont be able to remember what song was going on in the
background afterwards because your brain wasnt focusing on it.

There is something known as the Doppler effect which is part of psychoacoustics.

You have probably experienced it when a police car drives past with its siren on,
it appears that the pitch of the siren is getting lower as the police car gets
further away. This is due to our perception of the soundwave in our head. As it is
getting further away it appear that the wavelength is getting longer and the
frequency is decreasing.
Health and Safety with sound
The level of noise from where protection must be worn in a workplace is 85
decibels. When listening back to a mix in the studio it is recommended that you
listen to it at 85 decibels to be safe and hear all of the parts of the track properly.
Sound can actually be very dangerous, especially to a pregnant woman, if
mother is constantly surrounded be load noises while the baby is in the womb
the baby could be born with a whole list of problems. As it is getting further away
it appear that the wavelength is getting longer and the frequency is decreasing.
Musical spaces
Different musical spaces are going to require different characteristics. In a
recording studio control room at the front of the room you are going to want the
front of the room to sound completely with as minimal reverb as possible so that
you can hear a mix in its pure form without hearing secondary versions of it
through the reverb, this means that the walls, ceiling and floors in this area will
have to be made out of insulation, and carpet. To really prevent this reverb when
you are listening to mix work out the first place that the sound will rear the wall
from the speakers and place acoustic panels there. To work this out simply move
a mirror along the wall until you reach the first place where you can see the
speaker cone in the mirror and thats the spot that you need to use. Towards the
back of the room you will want to have slightly more reverb so you should
slightly harder surfaces in this area.
In a live space you will want a lot more reverb to give it that live feel. To do this a
good material for the walls would be painted concreate blocks. If there are any
large window spaces you may want to cover these with curtains or drapes to
stop sound escaping as winds are reflective but they also let a lot of sound out
which is bad.
There is a way of measuring how acoustically efficient a space is known as
absorption coefficients, this is the chart that you would use.

We used this chart to help us work out the acoustic coefficients of our music
venue. These pictures show our workings and results.

hhh

To complete this experiment we used a tape measure to fist work out the surface
area of the room in centimetres squared and then we also used this information
to work out the volume of the room in centimetres cubed. After this we worked
out the area of a large drape curtain that was on one side of the wall as this was
the only large surface that was made of a different material so we had to work
this out to make sure that the results were fair. The walls were made of painted
concrete block which is one of the most reflective materials, the floor was made
from some kind of rubberised material, the ceiling was made from ply wood
sheeting and the drape curtains were made from a velvet like fabric. Know this
information can be very useful for working out the speaker and stage positioning
in your space.