AY2024/2025 Semester 1, Monday and Thursday, 12:00 to 14:00, WW-CR4
Prologue
The concert hall is a marvelous microcosm of the wondrous world of sound. Musicians practice for decades refining their craft to earn their spot in the great hall, figuring out how they interact harmoniously with their instrument. The instruments themselves are also a spectacle, the differing way in which the soundboard flexes or the air jet vibrates creates a whole new world of timbre with different overtones, even though all of them are playing the same A note. Yet, the different instruments combine to form a symphony, their combined sound waves diffuse and reflect across the entire concert hall in a controlled manner, bringing the epic music into our ears, where our ears are persistently toyed by the auditory illusions that the designers seek to create.
Course Synopsis
Ever wondered why we perceive some sounds as soothing while others are jarring? How are the sound effects in movies created and what causes them? Why do some rooms echo more than others? This course investigates the physical production of sound, integrating insights from physics, while delving into the psychological intricacies of human sound perception, drawing from psychology and cognitive science. Students will develop quantitative reasoning skills to model sound interactions and apply these principles to practical scenarios such as music, speech, room acoustics, and noise control, while integrating perspectives from physics, psychology, and data science.
Key Topics
How are sounds created and how they propagate?
How sounds interact with themselves?
How to objectively analyse sounds?
How are sounds measured?
How do we perceive sounds?
How do sounds interact with the environment?
Reading List
Compulsory Reading:
Why you hear what you hear, by Eric J. Heller, Princeton University Press, ISBN: 9780691148595
Supplementary Reading:
The Physics of Musical Instruments, by Neville H. Fletcher and Thomas D. Rossing, ISBN: 9780387983745
Room Acoustics, 4th Edition, by Heinrich Kuttruff, Spon Press, ISBN: 0419245804
Musical Instrument Design: Practical Information for Instrument Design, by Bart Hopkin, See Sharp Press, ISBN: 9781884365089
Engineering Noise Control, by David A. Bies, Colin H. Hansen and Carl Q. Howard, CRC Press, ISBN: 9781498724050
Assessment
20% Homework
10% Class participation
20% Mid-term test
50% Project (consisting of both individual and group components)
Course information is correct as of 24th May 2024, and may be subjected to changes.
P.S. The cover photo was taken in Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg in 2023, which was part of my ongoing side quest to explore the sonic properties of different concert halls around the world. Little fun fact about the trip: The trip happened because an architect, an acoustician, and a physicist are in awe for this concert hall for different reasons! Given that tickets to concerts in Elbphilharmonie are hard to come by, we got our tickets well before we confirmed the trip, and we had all converged from our different itineraries in Europe just for this!