Morones 1 Mark Morones PHYS 130 14/12/2011 E.C. Paper: A collection of opinions analogous to The Science of Musical Sound.

In effort to understanding the physics of sound and music and the properties of manipulation of sound I recently purchased Dr. John R. Pierce s The Science of Musical Sound. This paper derives from my knowledge and understanding about music, particularly through this book as well as class lectures. A large portion of this paper is an adaptation of Pierce s writings and findings. There are various topics of discussion within the book; however, I have chosen to write about only a selected few. Music is defined as the art of sound in time, which expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony and colour. It refers to the composite usage and employment of intentional noise for specific means. Sound, as a wave, is heard by the disturbance of air, in vibrations, which travel at a rate of 344 m/s (1,230 km/hr; 767 mph) in air. In fresh water, the speed of sound is approximately 1,482 m/s (5,335 km/hr; 3,315 mph). In steel, the speed of sound is about 5,960 m/s (21,460 km/h; 13,330 mph). Amongst other traits, sound travels in the form of sinusoidal plane waves; through gases, plasma, and liquids it acts as longitudinal (compression) waves, whereas in solids it can travel as both as longitudinal waves and transverse waves. A transverse wave is a moving wave that consists of oscillations occurring perpendicular to the direction of energy transfer and propagation. Light waves also travel are also examples of transverse waves, but that is to be discussed at a latter time.

Morones 2 Before further explanation, I will discuss some of the fundamentals of the physics of sound. In a sound wave, the rate at which the wave oscillates is related to its frequency. Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. A tone s frequency is directly related to its pitch. This is the reason an A above middle C, which has a frequency of 440 Hz, sounds different from middle C, at 261.626 Hz. Additionally, a sound s pitch is considered to be a definite quality related to musical tones. Some psychologists insist that pitch is a name for our subjective experience of periodic waveforms, rather than a physical property of the sound wave that reaches our ears (Pierce 19). Aside from this view, most musical sounds, ones that have a definite pitch, are periodic. This means that they repeat their pattern over and over again. To understand and calculate pitch, the frequency must be determined. The time (T) between each crest and each crest or trough to trough of a sound wave is the period. The number of periods determines the frequency. Mathematically, we calculate frequency as k times the square root of the tension divided by the length times the square root of the mass per unit length. French mathematician and philosopher Marin Mersenne related pitch to the actual number of vibrations per second. The frequency is proportional to the reciprocal of length; 1/n. Frequency refers to the definite pitch of a sound, which allows us to distinguish the harmony and melody. If you were to stretch a string and pluck, creating waves through vibration, it would present a tone. The stretched string vibrates at a particular frequency, for instance, middle C. If we were to reduce the vibrating length by 5/6ths of the original length, the audible tone/frequency increases by 6/5ths, which is equivalent to a minor third above, which is Eb. Additional fractional reductions include: 4/5, which is third, E; , a perfect fourth, F; and 2/3, a perfect fifth, G (Pierce 24).

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Because of this tension, a string, when stretched and plucked, will vibrate back and forth, as well as return to its original position, due to the inertia of the string. The velocity of the wave is measured in meters per second, and is assigned the formula of V = T/m. The velocity equals the square root of the tension (T), which is measured in newtons, divided by its mass (m) per unit length of the string, which is measured in kilograms per meter. This is the reason a string with more tension (tighter string) has a higher frequency and the waves move faster than those of the larger string. By understanding how to calculate sound s velocity, we can determine the distance you are from a storm. If we count the seconds between seeing a flash of lightning and hearing thunder, we can allude to the to the position of the storm. The distance, in feet, is about 1,000 times the number of seconds, which is about five seconds for a mile, or three seconds for a kilometer (Pierce 29). Another interesting factor is that the velocity of sound waves increases with temperature. This is because the air s elasticity results from the motion of its molecules, which move faster at higher temperatures (29). Furthermore, I would like to discuss, in grater detail, the essence of echoes and reverberations. An echo is a wave s response to solid material. The activity of sound waves and their response determine the amount of echo they have. An echo demonstrates the relation between frequency and pitch. This can be observed when you stand in front of an ampitheatre, stadium seats, or concrete steps. These receding sequences of regularly spaced vertical surfaces allow for larger reflection of echoes. If we describe the distance between reflecting surfaces as W, we can determine that the sound has to travel twice the distance to return back to the source/observer. We conclude that the time interval between each echo and the

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next (T) is twice the distance (W) divided by the velocity (v) of sound, mathematically as T = 2W/v (Pierce 30). The frequency of the echoes is thus [f= 1/T = v/2W]. If you were three feet away from the next seat in a stadium the frequency would be 188 echoes per second, which corresponds to a pitch of approximately the first G below middle C, about 196 Hz. Echoes occur when we hear the same sound from two sources between 20 and 26 meters away. This is why well-built auditoriums prevent single, strong reflections, so that the sound waves from the stage reach the listener s ears first, in a direct path without reflections. Concerning music and acoustics, strong, single reflections and small, nearby reflections are bad. This can be explained easily with microphones. If the sound is a tone of frequency f = v/4L, a trough of the reflected wave will reach the microphone just as the crest of the original wave reaches the microphone, and the two will destructively interfere with each other, and cancel out the frequency. In 1973, David M. Green published results on temporal acuity and our ability to distinguish small periods of time. He was able to measure the ear s ability to discriminate between two signals that have the same energy spectrum. He concluded that the ear can decipher the waveforms, say for example, between a regular sound and the same sound reversed, if their duration is greater than two milliseconds. The phenomena of the precedence effect and of echoes are of extreme importance to music. If one of two sources of the same sound lags behind the other by more than a millisecond, or foot, the earlier source swallows up the later as far as the normal human s sense of direction goes. But if the time difference is more than sixty to eighty milliseconds, we hear an echo. Although we sense a sound as coming from the direction of first arrival, later arrivals add both intensity

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and reverberant quality, which is essential for good musical sound (Pierce 137). This is why we feel a sound of power when we hear a church choir in the magnificent gothic cathedrals, or why a recording artist perfects the essence of build-up when adding volume to and doubling/reinforcing his signal. Reverberation time is defined as the time it takes a sound to decrease 60 dB below its initial frequency. Professor Wallace Clement Sabine was the first to define reverberation time. This was an important factor in the design of lecture halls and auditoriums. A persistent problem with designing concert halls has been the accurate prediction of reverberation time. Sabine gave a simple formula for the reverberation time T, measured in seconds, as T = 13.8L/va. L equals the mean free path way between successive reflections of sound waves, v is the velocity, and a is the sound-absorption coefficient, which is zero for perfect reflection and unity for complete absorption (Pierce 146). Sabine assumed that the mean pathway (L) was proportional to the cube root of the volume. However, it was already understood that under an ergodic condition, from the kinetic theory of gases, the mean free path is given by L = 4V/S. In this condition, the sound traverses all possible paths. However, a problem with Sabine s formula is the fact that it predicts a finite reverberation time for a complete absorption (a=1). In 1929, K. Schuster and E. Waetzmann, and in 1930, Carl F. Eyring remedied this by proposing a revised formula of T = 13.8(L/v)/ln(1-a), which were accepted for quite some time (Pierce 147). Most often we tend to hear reverberation rather than coloration when the difference between frequencies at which the response goes to zero or dips sharply is small compared with a critical bandwidth roughly a minor third, or 6/5ths of the frequency. However, I have heard the opposite as well with consonance and

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dissonance, argued that we have only to venture up one harmonic along the 6/5 Eb series: its sixth harmonic (Bb, 36:5) clashes with the 7th harmonic of C (7:1). They are 49 cents (a quarter tone) apart and well within the critical bandwidth. The frequency difference between successive dips in the response curve is v/2L. For reflections to not distort the sound, we should have v/2L smaller than (5/4)f or L > (2/5)(v/f) (Pierce 136, 137). This is why we must keep microphones away from floors and walls when recording music. A man named Hermann Von Helmholtz developed a [Helmholtz] resonator, which is typically a hollow glass sphere that has two diametrically opposed tubular necks on each side. One opening was placed to the ear and the other to the source of sound. Helmholtz was able to determine the strengths of harmonics of a periodic sound, as well as identifying the frequencies of non-harmonic partials, such as bells and gongs, by detecting the amplified harmonic, which he could hear separately (Pierce 45). This was because the sound contained a harmonic whose frequency was equal to or close to the resonant frequency of the cavity of the resonator. Additionally, he noticed that the sound in the resonator would continue after the sound source was suddenly turned off (45). I have often noticed that life and everyday human noises seem to be louder on cloudy days. I have learned that this is because the sound waves are dispersed by any object are reflected back onto the earth by the density of the clouds above, thus intensifying the volume. This is apparent on cloudier days, where they are more dense. The reflection of sound is the process in which waves overlap each other, one traveling to the right and one traveling to the left. The pressure adds to the wave size, but the velocities, being in opposite directions and therefore having

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opposite signs, cancel each other out. In computer generated music, a waveform that changes with amplitude can be produced by using a sine wave as an input to a device with the input-output characteristics of increasing out put as input increases. If the input is a sine wave of small amplitude, the output will be almost sinusoidal. If the input is a sine wave of larger amplitude, the amplitude will be a peaked waveform, which has many harmonic partials (Pierce 215). In closing, there are many aspects of music to be discussed. These are just a few, which are adaptations of John Pierce s book, The Science of Musical Sound. Sound is made up of changes in air pressure in the form of waves. Frequency is the property of sound that most determines pitch. The frequencies an ear can hear are limited to a specific range of frequencies. Mechanical vibrations perceived as sound travel through all forms of matter: gases, liquids, solids, and plasmas. The matter that supports the sound is called the medium. Sound cannot travel through a vacuum. However, in recent decades we have discovered how to transfer audio through means of light, lasers, and fiber optics. The audible frequency range for humans is typically given as being between about 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz (20 kHz). High frequencies often become more difficult to hear with age. Our ears are all that the human body has to perceive music naturally, and thus, we must strive to protect them, as they will not last forever. Finally, in preview of what I have been studying and working towards is the idea of the correlation between sound frequencies and those of light and color. Although there is a large difference in the number of frequencies, I m certain there is a calculation in which will reveal the blue notes.

Morones 8 Furthermore, another area of research is understanding and exploring the concepts of convenient and intentional transferring of audio signals from a source over a single distance to a particular observer and place. Thank you.