Principles of Musical Acoustics, William M. Hartmann, Springer, 2013. $59.99 paper (348 pp.). ISBN 978-1-4614-6785-4
Musical acoustics is a rich, multidisciplinary subject that provides an interesting context for teaching physics concepts in an algebra-based course. Many undergraduates love music and are curious to know how instruments and sound recording and reproduction devices work. Central topics usually include vibrations and waves, analog and digital electronics, elements of musical structure, and the physiological and psychological aspects of human hearing.
Principles of Musical Acoustics by William Hartmann is part of the Springer series Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics, and it reads very much like a set of lectures honed over many years of teaching. Hartmann has taught musical acoustics at Michigan State University since 1974 and is known for his text Signals, Sound, and Sensation (Springer, 1998). His new book consists of 27 short chapters that cover the same basic topics as the classic text The Science of Sound (3rd edition, Addison-Wesley, 2002) by Thomas Rossing, F. Richard Moore, and Paul Wheeler—but in about half as many pages.
The Science of Sound supports two semesters worth of material that can be divided into courses on musical acoustics and the physics of electronic sound. In Principles of Musical Acoustics, Hartmann provides a more compact volume with about a semester’s worth of material while still including both instrument acoustics and audio electronics. It is a logical approach, given that live and recorded demonstrations are both useful pedagogical tools.
Although the book is not broken into formal sections, its chapters are evidently organized into groups. The first 17 focus on foundations of musical acoustics: vibrations and waves and the human dimensions of hearing physiology and psychology. They include a discussion of the essential instrumentation of an acoustics lab, including oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, transducers, frequency counters, and function generators. Other topics covered are Fourier analysis and sound intensity. Students mastering those foundational chapters will have a basic understanding of sound production, propagation, and perception. They will also find tips on how to use relevant lab instrumentation. The remainder of the book breaks into two sets of chapters on the auditory system and psychoacoustics.
Writing in an informal, flowing style, Hartmann effectively uses analogies to explain concepts. He does not, however, provide chapter summaries or lists of important terms and concepts, such as those included in other texts like Donald Hall’s popular Musical Acoustics (3rd edition, Brooks/Cole, 2002). Each chapter features useful drawings, diagrams, and graphs. Some diagrams include multiple parts to illustrate, for example, the oscillations of a standing wave and the interference of two waves traversing different path lengths. The text does not suggest it, but computer animations and simulations could complement those diagrams to give a sense of the dynamics in slow motion. Equations peppered throughout support quantitative work—for instance, calculations of the modes of vibrations of musically relevant structures or of wave disturbances in space and time. Example calculations set aside from the main text in boxes are pertinent and clear.
Exercises appear at the end of each chapter. Some are straightforward applications involving a short calculation or restatement of a concept. Others provide more of a challenge, encouraging students to integrate different ideas, think of implications not previously stated, or draw on their own auditory experience. Unlike many texts that provide brief answers to selected questions, this book gives solutions, including calculations and full explanations, to most of the exercises. Those solved problems provide an opportunity for self-study that could potentially stimulate cross-disciplinary dialog between colleagues in physics, music, and psychology departments.
Principles of Musical Acoustics is a welcome addition to the existing selection of undergraduate texts. It does not contain as much material as the texts by Rossing and coauthors or Hall, both of which I’ve taught from many times, and it lacks literature references, so it would not be a first choice for researchers. However, the writing is clear and lively, and it would be accessible to its target audience. Coupled with a laboratory component and ample demonstrations and computer visualizations, it could form the basis for a stimulating semester course.
John Smedley is a professor of physics at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. He teaches algebra-based introductory courses on musical acoustics, energy and environment, and the physics of sports.
