Introduction to the Musical Acoustics technical area

Abstract

The field of musical acoustics encompasses all aspects of the design, construction, and performance of musical instruments (including the voice), as well as the physical and cultural environment in which they are played, with the goal of understanding how these elements contribute, separately or together, to the acoustic characteristics. While the general acoustic behavior of most musical instruments can be explained in terms of fundamental principles governing waves in strings, pipes, and plates, there is a high degree of complexity in the mechanical motion and the resulting sound that enables a rich variety of tonal character and musical expression. This presentation will provide an overview of current research areas that address the complexity and variety of musical instruments and the listener experience, including nonlinear effects, flow-structure interaction, computational modeling and machine learning, measurement techniques, performer-instrument interaction, and recording/playback technology. Along the way, the relevance of other technical areas of acoustics will be noted, including physical acoustics, structural acoustics, signal processing, computational acoustics, and psychological and physiological acoustics.