I Preliminaries to a Study of Musical Acoustics Starting an extensive book on a closely knit subject is akin to beginning a jour- ney, since it carries a certain feeling of anticipation and perhaps trepidation as the author and the reader search for ways in which to work together. For the author the journey will be through territory he has visited before, most of which he has explored thoroughly. For some readers, almost everything will be new; a few may feel at times overwhelmed by the new things crowding about them that seem fa- miliar and even trivial to those who have been there before. The author must hark back to his own first visits to the territory of his subject as he tries not to introduce too many new words and ideas all at once. His ultimate aim must be to give enough guidance on a limited number of carefully chosen subjects that the inter- ested reader will eventually be able to explore new territory on his own. As you read on in this book, constant attention to two things can add much to the suc- cess of our travels together through the subject of musical acoustics: (1) your ac- tive participation is needed to make the joint exploration meaningful, and (2) re- trospection will be encouraged as we re- turn several times to things seen or heard earlier for closer examination from a more mature viewpoint. 1.1. Musical Acoustics: The Meeting Place of Music, Vibration Physics, Auditory Science, and Craftsmanship This book is addressed most directly (though not exclusively) to people having a reasonable playing knowledge of music who would like to learn something of the ways in which music as an art form in- tertwines itself with our understanding of vibrating objects, with the study of audi- tory perception, and with the craft of the instrument maker. The focus of the book is on the vibrations of objects and of the air which surrounds them, but the partic- ular manifestations of vibration physics that are chosen for discussion are those which play a significant role in actual music-making. Because music is intended to be heard, we must give considerable attention to the way in which our audi- tory nervous system functions as it picks out musical patterns from the complex acoustical signals that reach our ears. In the parts of this book dealing with vibra- tion physics and practical music, I shall be quite explicit in telling how and why various phenomena take place. The per- ception aspects of our subject will be dealt with somewhat differently. I will tell what it is we hear when various kinds of sound are presented to our ears, but» Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics will not describe bow the vibrations of an eardrum are led through the middle and inner ear to produce a myriad of nerve impulses chat travel by many pathways to the central nervous system. Nor will I de- tail how these impulses come to act upon one another in several ways simulta- neously, in a continuous process that can span a number of successive sounds to provide us with recognizable patterns of sensation. In other words, in this part of the subjece we will confine ourselves to a description of phenomena, without much concern for the ways in which they come about. ‘The manner in which each topic is in- troduced, the order of presentation, and the choice of the topics themselves have all been predominantly influenced by my experience with musicians and instrument makers as we have worked together over the past ewo decades. Much of the mate- rial in this book is of recent origin, a con- siderable fraction of it being the result of my own observations and calculations, or of my analysis of the recent work of oth- ers. While I have tried everywhere to make clear the reasoning behind each as- sertion and to present examples of the data which support it, it must be under- stood that the reasons and examples shown here are merely illustrative and constitute only a small part of the basis for my conclusions. Almost everything in this book has had the benefit of extensive rehearsal in both spoken and written form. Over the years I have been blessed with a number of extremely capable stu- dents and laboratory guests. The opportu- nity to sharpen up the various ideas by talking with these people and with inter- ested colleagues in physics and engineer- ing has been immensely valuable. More recently I have had co deal with the ex- 4 pository problems connected with tex ing various methods of adjustment ¢, craftsmen or explaining the reasoning ke hind my activities as I trimmed up some. one's trumpet, flute, clarinet, oboe, », bassoon. These experiences have added ¢ certain intensity to the more teased classroom atmosphere of the courses and lecture series in musical acoustics I have given One question chat immediately arise in che mind of a prospective reader of book on acoustics written by a physicist concerns the amount of mathematica! knowledge that will be required of him, If you will leaf quickly through the book you will notice that I have rigorously con- fined myself in the text to the simplest of arithmetic—addition, suberaction, mul- tiplicacion, and division; a number may occasionally be squared or carry a square foot sign. Numerical illustrations of the various calculations are supplied in almost every case, partly as a way co show what is going on and partly as a convenient way co supply ourselves with numbers for later use. While the level of overt mathematics has been kept to the lowest possible, Ido not at all wish to leave the impression that the book makes similarly low ée- mands on your ability to follow a line of reasoning or on your ability to do a litte courageous speculating. Ie will perhaps reassure many of you to learn that easoo ably diligent efforts on the part of musi cian-scudents in my musical acoustics course have always rewarded them witha good understanding of the subject. Thet greater familiarity with musical in- scruments seems to offset certain slight advantages possessed by their sien tifically trained classmates who (except ft those who are in che life sciences) stPreliminaries to a Study of Musical Acoustics likely to be a little ill at ease with logical reasoning carried on without the help of mathematics. Those of you who come to this book al- ready supplied with a good knowledge of engineering acoustics or of physics and mathematics will sometimes find my pre- sentation a little strange or at least unfa- miliar. At times the strangeness comes from the fact that musical vibrations can have somewhat different properties from the vibrations with which you are famil- iar, or chat different aspects of these vi- brations come to the fore as dominant. Sometimes the feeling of unfamiliarity may come from my going quickly over something that you considered difficult because you learned it late in graduate school, and other times I will labor mightily over points that you found obvi- ous in high school. Remember that all of this is new to my major audience, and enjoy with me the fact that what an in- telligent musician finds straightforward in vibration physics is conditioned greatly by his intensive experience with things that oscillate. Remember also with me that perhaps one of the reasons he chose music as a profession is that his high- school mathematics was taught in such a way as to frighten him, whereas yours at- tracted you! Another reason for the unfa- miliarity you may feel in this book comes from the fact that you may not be used to taking as careful account of the properties of ears as we are forced to do in a musical context. There is one other group of prospective readers to whom I should address a note of comment and explanation—those of you who have some knowledge of modern psychoacoustics. Perhaps the main thing that will attract your attention (and maybe your concern) is the fact that I 3 seem to attribute to the ears of musicians and musical listeners a far greater ability and achievement than might seem jus- tified by the careful laboratory experi- ments in hearing that have been carried on during the past forty-five years. There are a number of reasons for this apparent discrepancy, reasons which are themselves of considerable importance to all of us as we begin our exploration of musical acoustics. In the first place, skilled exper- imenters measuring the properties of ears have almost always taken great pains to supply their auditory signals to their sub- jects’ ears in the most sanitary fashion possible. This calls for the use of carefully calibrated earphones constructed in such & way as to exclude all outside sounds. This exclusion not only of noise but also of the distracting and hard-to-control reverbera- tions of sound in the room is necessary in certain circumstances. In musical sur- roundings the human auditory apparatus exploits the possibility of hearing and re- heating the echoing sounds of the in- strument. Musical sounds are by their very nature highly organized collections of acoustical components which are grouped into patterns by the composer and the player. The emission of sound by musical instruments is of such a nature (especially in a room) that a few missing or out-of-place pieces of sensory input have little effect on our ability to detect or recognize their relationships. A further difference between the capabilities shown by subjects of a psychoacoustical labora- tory experiment and by musicians practic- ing their profession arises from the fact that we are comparing the performance of a heterogeneous group in unfamiliar sur- roundings with the accomplishments of a group of people who by talent, training, and experience have become quite expertFundamentals of Musical Acoustics ft what they are doing. However, this is ‘an expertise which we should not expect them to bring into the laboratory unless ‘great care is taken co rese them in musi- cally relevant ways. Perhaps you will be stimulated to extend and clarify the na- ‘eure of some of the musical-perception phenomena I describe and thus join the ‘growing number of people who see this as fan area of enquity chat promises many rewards to out understanding 1.2. The Organization of This Book Now thae I have compleced a fairly ex- tended discussion of how various groups of my readers may find themselves react- ing co this book, ic is time for me co outline its general structure. It will then be possible for me ro suggest some ways in which you can use the book to extract the fullest measure of understanding from ‘The general principles that governed the writing of this book may be sum- marized compactly in a set of numbered statements of @ sort which will be used for similar purposes throughout this, work. 1. Use is made of «carefully choten mii mum of technical exms beyond thase com ‘monly wsed in music. Most technical terms ae iealicized on their fst appearance and de- fined there either in formal way of by means ofan illustrative example of theit usage 2. This technical terminology is noemally Idencical with that uted in other branches of physics or engineering, Occasionally. there will be small differences, these being iden- tied and the seasons for chem explained. Te has been necessary to define a very limited number of terms that ate not used elsewhere; special attention is called co these and an ex planation is given of why they ate needed. 6 3. Fundamental ideas are int whenever possible in the setting of erm ‘experience (at last thae of musicians) ore few concepts are developed by making wo ideas that have already” been dealt wit thoroughly in earlier parts ofthe book, fof the fundamental ideas are initial pe, enced in simplified form, thee fuller dow ‘opment taking place as we go 00 through te book. I have tied to preven the iil sn plication fom having posible misery “4. Great care has been aken t keep « clearly marked distinction between mechani cal phenomena in an instrument ot inthe mom (which are the special province of physicist or enginet) and the human sudan sponse %0 eheie phenomena (whichis th primary conceen of & perception psyhaog For example, the word lod is never wed denote 4 vigorous oscillation; the word ir ferved as 4 description ofthe perceived nue of his otilaion. In similar fashion cre ba been taken to keep specifically music eri ology from confusing itself with vermis ‘ed for other purposes. Let us now turn our attention toa de scription of the various chapters and of their relationships. While musical in- struments and musical sounds are dalt with constantly in chapters 2 through 6 the main effore here is to give che reader an introduction to the way one goes about studying things acoustical and an unde standing of some of the basic ides of vibration physics and their perceptual correlates. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 are concered with the behavior of some expliily me sical objects (e.g., plucked and strakk strings, ketcledram heads, and glocker- spiels). Here we are getting reajy © think abour guitars, pianos, etc, by po viding ourselves with some of the applic tions of ideas developed earlier. laPreliminaries to a Study of Musical Acoustics chapters 2 through 9 we confine our at- tention to vibrations that are set in mo- tion by impulsive excitations such as striking or plucking. In chapters 10, 11, and 12 we begin the study of the behavior of systems that are set into motion by repetitive forces, such as when one pushes a child on a swing. This part of the book widens its concerns to include the acoustical phe- nomena that manifest themselves as sound in a room. These chapters deal in part with the production of sound in a room, its spread, and its detection from the point of view of physics. They also provide us with a solid foundation of knowledge about what our hearing mech- anism can do as it copes with such sounds. As in earlier chapters, most of the illustrations of the various ideas are chosen from musical practice, along with a certain amount borrowed from the audio industry, with its concern with mi- crophones and loudspeakers. Chapters 13, 14, and 15 are devoted ptimarily to a description of the manner in which our ears “put together” various sounds in the comparison of pitch and of loudness. Also discussed are the ways in which the properties of certain classes of sounds allow the ear to combine them into relationships that ate recognized in music. We will find that a great deal of what shapes formal music (e.g., harmonic and scale relations) is strongly influenced by the fact that we commonly listen to music in a room rather than outdoors, where as a matter of fact a musician may feel quite uncomfortable and insecure. The rest of the book applies the princi- ples developed earlier to an explanation of the nature and behavior of the major types of musical instruments. Chapters 16, 17, and 18 take up the keyboard in- 7 struments, which are constrained to pro- duce tones having rigidly fixed pitch. The pipe organ is touched upon only as the simplest example of such instruments and as a means for showing the existence of certain tuning problems and how they may be dealt with. Pianos, harpsichords, and clavichords, on the other hand, are discussed in more detail; the impulsively excited vibration of their strings is de- scribed and account is taken of the way the string reacts back on the exciting hammer or plectrum, as well as of the way in which the strings “talk” with the soundboard and so also with the room. The practices of instrument makers in proportioning strings, hammers or plec- tra, and soundboards to one another are described and explained, with examples ranging from the latest in pianos back to harpsichords of the seventeenth century. Notice that the choice of keyboard stringed instruments as our starting point for the systematic study of instruments is a repetition of our earlier choice of impul- sively excited systems as the first type to be dealt with on an introductory level. Chapter 19, on the human voice as a musical instrument, introduces us to the family of sustained-tone instruments hav- ing adjustable pitch. The voice makes a good introduction because it has a vir- tually autonomous sound source (the larynx) whose output is shaped by the vocal passages to produce the various vowel sounds, etc., before being trans- mitted into the room. Studying the larynx by itself enables us to learn the general principles governing the mainte- nance of self-sustained oscillations, undis- tracted by the subsequent modification of the resulting sound by the vocal tract, whose operations are also susceptible to study in isolation. Once these physicalFundamentals of Musical Acoustics systems are adequately described it be- comes possible to consider how their Ptoperties can be exploited for musical purposes, an exploitation which is of course strongly influenced by the way we perceive sounds in various contexts. The brass and woodwind families of in- struments are taken up next, in chapters 20, 21, and 22. The nature of these chapters is quite similar to that of che previous ones dealing with musical in- struments. The sound source is examined, this time along with the air column by which it is controlled, if not enslaved. The nature of the internally generated sound at various dynamic levels of play- ing is discussed, along with modifications to this sound that occur as it leaves the instrument for the listening room. Once again we find that the interplay of source, room, and ear has a great deal to do with the way in which an instrument is used for music. One additional subject is touched on in these three chapters: the scientifically guided means that have been developed for the diagnosis and correction of discrepancies in the construction of the wind instruments. Some of these tech- niques are available to the player himself, while some of them stay within the prov- ince of the instrument maker or repair- man. These adjustment techniques are in- teresting not only because of their direct usefulness to the musician, but because they provide us with examples of the way in which one can learn to exploit his mu- sical, auditory, scientific, and tool-using skills to unravel and apply information about the acoustical events that take place within an instrument. Chapters 23 and 24 are devoted to an analogous description of the structure and behavior of the violin and of its immedi- ate relatives. 8 The final chapter serves almost as a coda in which we examine some musically peculiar sounds such as the “mul- tiphonics” which have excited the recent interest of composers and woodwind players, the wolf tones that sometimes bother string players, and certain sounds produced by the brasses. In all of these examples the sound production processes are very similar to one another, being an elaboration and offshoot of the processes that generate the more ordinary sounds of these instruments. In a similar vein, the perception processes that take place when we listen to these sounds turn out to be an elaboration of those we have studied throughout the rest of the book. 1.3. A Brief Operating Manual This book is written in a very close-knit fashion, with each part depending very much on what comes before and also pre- paring the way for what is to follow. The efficacy of your reading will, as a result, be considerably enhanced if you try to keep some awareness of what you have al- ready covered and what is coming. At many places in this book references are made back to earlier sections or to ear- lier diagrams. Your choice of whether or not to interrupt your reading to go back will obviously be governed by several things. If you have no idea of what the reference is about, you may be missing an important piece to the puzzle. You should also be aware that a great deal more is hiding in the earlier material chan was apparent on your first reading. You will come to understand why things were said in a certain way, and why certain things were not said. As to references for- ward, it would be a source of unendingPreliminaries to a Study of Musical Acoustics frustration if at every turn I were to in- clude a description of every future use of an idea or fact under discussion. For this reason you will find almost no allusion to later parts of the book, even where a set of summarizing statements is manifestly incomplete. At the end of every chapter you will find a section labeled "Examples, Experi- ments, and Questions.” This section is a little free-wheeling and allows you to ex- ercise your ingenuity and imagination upon the ideas which have been presented in the chapter. Some of the suggested ex- periments are extremely easy to do, some quite difficule. There are puzzles and problems of all degrees of challenge, and there are also simple descriptions of various phenomena that serve to cast light on the text material, but which would fit nowhere else in the formal structure of the chapter. Even if you do not wish to try to do the experiments ot to solve the problems, you should read them and the examples, considering them to be an inte- gral part of the text. Go after this book in somewhat the way you should treat every- thing else to be learned in the world— grab hold anywhere, strive for under- standing by any means at your disposal, 9 look for successive unfoldings of the truth, and constantly test your under- standing by trying to go back and forth between application and implication. The problem of providing up-to-date, accurate, and intelligible reference mate- rial suitable for readers of a book of this sort proves to be severe, though the situa- tion gives promise of improving in the near future. The problem is particularly acute when one is trying to meet the needs of nontechnical readers who have studied only the first few chapters; this is one of the reasons why the number of notes grows rapidly as we approach the end of the book. You will find the refer- ences collected in a group at the end of each chapter. Notes teferting to books and journal articles usually include a few words of explanation and comment, which serve to tie the references to the text and to each other. The articles and books are generally chosen not only for their direct contribution to something in the text, but also as an entryway (via their own sets of references) to the current literature on the subject and to the names of its leading contributors. For this rea- son, no separate bibliography is provided.