Music, Sound, and Technology

This book is about music. the instruments and players who produce it. and the technologies that support it. Although much modern music is produced by electronic means. its underlying basis is still traditional acoustical sound production. and that broad topic provides the basis for this book. There are many fine books available that treat musical acoustics largely from the physical point of view. The approach taken here is to present only the fundamentals of musical physics. while giving special emphasis to the relation between instrument and player and stressing the characteristics of instruments that are of special concern to engineers and technicians in- volved in the fields of recording. sound reinforcement. and broadcasting. In order to understand musical instruments in their normal performance environments. the student must have a basic working knowledge of physical and architectural acoustics. The book begins with a review of the elements of acoustics. stressing the nature of sound fields and phenomena that are wavelength-dependent. The book then moves on to a discussion of those aspects of psychological acoustics that are of special concern to music technicians. most notably concepts of stereophonic imaging. loudness-related phenomena. and critical band theory.