Physics Today - Evaluating Musical Instruments

2014/04/14 14:11:10

wgdevanna

There is an article in the April 2014 edition of Physics Today (pp. 35-40) entitled "Evaluating musical instruments" by D. Murray Campbell (Professor Emeritus and Senior Honorary Professorial Fellow in the school of physics and astronomy at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland).

I am still working my way through it, but the sections on piano and violin I have found quite interesting. The article is not overly technical or mathematical. Should be a good read for physical modellers.

Gregg

2014/04/14 14:14:14

craigb

Noticed you had less than 25 posts so here's the link:

http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/article/67/4/10.1063/PT.3.2347;jsessionid=fn3mxey2mfd6.x-aip-live-01

2014/04/14 14:17:39

wgdevanna

Fantastic! Thanks for posting the link.

2014/04/14 16:09:56

drewfx1

There are quite a few decent books about this sort of thing. Some are properly academic/scientific works (almost all on classical instruments because that's what gets funded) that, though the real deal, are not what I'd call friendly reading.

But this one, though it's sort of on building your own (non-traditional) musical instruments, has good and not ridiculously technical descriptions about how instruments "work":

http://www.amazon.com/Mus...on-ebook/dp/B0058DW4BM

2014/04/14 18:00:07

SteveStrummerUK

Fascinating article Gregg, good find!

2014/04/14 21:51:17

craigb

Wow, this is good... (Finally having a chance to read the article.)

Two take-aways so far: The first is that sympathetic vibrations contribute to the overall performance (sounds obvious, but you KNOW that digital keyboards don't model that feature). The second is how much the interaction between an instrument and the musician contributes to the perceived quality of the instrument by the musician (another area that most digital keyboards are weak in).

Ok, on to violins! (I wonder if there will be any sax to go with the violins?