Music acoustics at UNSW: Site Map

General topics

• FAQ in music acoustics.
• What is a decibel? (with sound samples).
• Measure your own hearing response as a function of frequency.
• Loudness and spectra: how spectral content and other features are related to loudness
• What are interference beats and Tartini tones? (with sound samples).
• Note names, MIDI numbers, frequencies and keyboard positions.
• Frequency to note converter (Hz to note name +/- cents).
• Helmholtz resonance (relevant to all nearly instrument families).
• What is a sound spectrum? (with examples and sound samples).
• How harmonic are harmonics? (A more subtle FAQ in music acoustics.)
• What is acoustic impedance? (And why is it important?)
• Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the musician's uncertainty principle, with sound files to demonstrate pitch resolution.

String topics

• Waves in strings, reflections, standing waves and harmonics with animations.
• Bows and strings, with an animation of Helmholtz motion.
• An introduction to Chladni patterns with links to photo collections for violin and guitar.
• Torsional waves in a bowed string: surprising results about bowing a string.
• Violin acoustics: the starting page for our studies of this family.
  • A simple introduction to how a violin works.
  • Articulation and vibrato on the violin, with sound files and oscillograms.
  • The research papers of John McLennan, luthier, engineer and PhD student in Music Acoustics at UNSW.
  • How do violins change with playing and environmental changes over time? Early results of a long term study.
• Guitar acoustics: the starting page for our studies on this family.
  • Basics about sound and how a guitar works.
  • Anatomy of an acoustic guitar.
  • Acoustics and components.
  • Acoustics and measurements.
  • Animations and diagrams of guitar body vibrations obtained from finite element models.
  • Acoustics of the air guitar -- some surprising findings.

Woodwind topics

• How do woodwind instruments work? (An easy introduction.)
• Open vs closed pipes (Flutes vs clarinets): closed pipes and open pipes and their harmonic series.
• Pipes and harmonics. Conical vs cylindrical bores, open and closed.
• Tuning woodwind instruments.
• Flute acoustics: the starting page for our studies on flutes, with extensive data sets.
  • An introduction to flute acoustics.
  • The Virtual Flute, a web tool for flutists and composers.
  • Shakuhachi acoustics - some studies on the end-blown flute from Japan.
• Clarinet acoustics: the starting page for our studies on clarinets, with extensive data sets.
  • An introduction to clarinet acoustics.
  • A robot clarinet player that we use for experimental studies
  • Influence of the vocal tract on sound production in the clarinet (In French).
  • Impedance measurements of clarinet player's airway for a number of subjects in the above study.
• Saxophone acoustics: the starting page for our studies on saxophones, with extensive data sets.
  • An introduction to saxophone acoustics.
  • How saxophonists tune their vocal tracts to play the altissimo register.

Brass topics and lip-reed topics

• An introduction to the acoustics of brass instruments (actually all the lip reed family).
• An introduction to the yidaki/ didjeridu and to our research on it.
• What makes a good didjeridu?

Percussion topics

• For now, our only page on percussion is the acoustics of bell plates. (It introduces some of the main concepts for vibrating bars and plates.)

Voice topics

• Voice acoustics: an introduction gives a brief overview and introduction, followed by a more detailed explanation.
• Voice acoustics research gives an introduction to our research in this area.
• An introduction to helium speech.
• Vocal tract tuning by sopranos.
• The acoustics of harmonic singing.
• Formants: what are they? A discussion of the different meanings of this term.

Hearing topics

• Measure your own hearing response.
• Our research related to cochlear implants.
• The dependence of pitch perception on the rate and place of stimulation of the cochlea.

Electrical and related physical topics

• Physclips: Mechanics with animations and video film clips.
• What is acoustic impedance and why is it important?
• AC circuits and electrical impedance.
• Filters made from resistors and capacitors.
• How does a loudspeaker work?

Publications

• Our Publications listing has journal articles, conference papers etc.
• Multimedia publications, apart from those on the web, include:
  • The Science of Music a series broadcast by the ABC.
  • An interactive introduction to the orchestra for children's choir and symphony orchestra.
  • "Speech and music, acoustics and coding, and what music might be 'for'". A scientific chamber opera exploring the topic.

FAQ, references and links

• Our page of references and links to societies, other labs, other web sites and to reference books.
• Research projects, scholarships and jobs in music acoustics.
• Research projects for musicians, rather than physicists.
• Frequently Asked Questions in music acoustics.
• Maps: how to get to UNSW and to Music Acoustics.

People

• People: staff, students, past students and collaborators in the Music Acoustics Lab.
• Photo Gallery. Pics of us around the lab or out having fun.
• Recent awards for the Music Acoustics Lab.
• Joe's music site.