Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange
Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [acoustics]

For questions about the physical science of sound production, behavior, and mechanics. Generic physics questions should be asked at our sister site Physics Stack Exchange.

For questions about the physical science of sound production, behavior, and mechanics.

Generic physics questions should be asked at our sister site Physics Stack Exchange.

172 questions
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Is there a broader term for instruments, like the gong, whose volume briefly increases after being sounded instead of immediately decaying?

For most instruments, their sound immediately begins to decay after they first sound. When you strike a piano key, for instance, the loudest sound is at the very beginning, after which the sound immediately dies out. But some instruments, like the…
Richard
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Physics behind why a bugle can play several notes, while a whistle only plays one note

A bugle and a whistle are essentially both tubes open at both ends. A bugle has no keys, yet you can play several notes on it. A whistle also has no keys, but it only plays a single note. Why is this? What's the physics behind it?
Lama
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7 answers

When we press a piano key, why does a high pitch note not run for as long as a low pitch note?

When we press the keys on the piano that exist on the ends, one can notice that when we press a high pitch note, it plays for a short bit and then the sounds fades away. However, when we play a low pitch note, it keeps playing for a lot longer i.e…
Quantum0xE7
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9 answers

Why do listeners hear the lowest note of a chord most distinctly?

Source: Prof. Bruce Taggart (PhD in Music Theory, U. of Pennsylvania), 58 s of his Coursera video. The lowest note of a chord is the most important one. It's the one that the listener hears most distinctly. Why is the above true? I know no…
user26407
24
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6 answers

Should low frequency players anticipate in orchestra?

"The bigger the instrument, the heavier the strings, the bigger the bow, the bigger the mouthpiece, the more you should anticipate." This concept is expressed occasionally by double bass players, conductors etc. Is there any good reasoning behind…
Kari Kääriäinen
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24
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3 answers

How does a pipe organist deal with latency or delay?

I've seen church setups (choir loft in back) where the organ console is 30 Meters or more away from the pipes. That implies that there would be a minimum of 100 milliseconds from pipe sounds back to the organist's ears. That would introduce around…
hotpaw2
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How can I reduce the echo/reverb in a large room if I can't add physical damping?

I was at an event this evening in a restored ballroom - absolutely beautiful, but parquet flooring, high ceilings, solid walls etc all made for terrible acoustics, and in fact I could hardly make out the voice of the individuals on stage. I think it…
Doktor Mayhem
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Why do certain rooms/vessels respond to specific frequencies?

Since I was a kid I was always wondering why is it that when I sing in a small room (i.e. bathroom!), whenever I touch a certain frequency, the whole room vibrates sympathetically. What are the parameters that make an acoustic body (be it a room,…
Shimmy Weitzhandler
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Does piano soundproofing require floating walls? Getting conflicting answers from professionals

I have just placed a new hybrid piano in a small 9x13 room in my apartment. I want to use the room for playing and for singing. Costly steps have already been taken, and, much to our dismay, we still need much improvement. At this point we have…
Money Pits
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Will a marching band on the go sound out of tune to an observer due to the Doppler Effect?

Upon reading Simon Singh's Big Bang, I came upon an explanation of the Doppler Effect (besides the known Formula 1 and ambulance sirens examples): Trumpeters were split into two groups and asked to play the note E-flat. One group of trumpeters…
Shevliaskovic
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8 answers

Why is the 5th stronger than the 1st in guitar spectrum?

I was experimenting with spectrum analysis of guitar plucks and this is what i got on an open low E recording: As you can see the strongest peak is at about 247 Hz, which is a B3 while the peak at about 82 Hz (E2), which should be the fundamental…
AlexanderCar
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Can eggboxes really be used to treat a room? If so, how?

I'm thinking about acoustically treating my room so I can listen to my mixes in higher clarity. I'm trying to think of how I can do it cheaply (even though you get what you pay for, I suppose), and my uncle, who is a composer, covered his studio in…
Featherball
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Why do two identical notes never cancel each other out?

If we consider a note as a sine function with a certain frequency (ignoring timbre), if you start playing another sine function, even with the same frequency but starting at a different offset, assuming the result is just a sum of the individual…
Powereleven
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Why are end-blown flutes shorter than their ideal length?

A flute is an open cylinder air column instrument. This means that an idealised flute, the fundamental pitch of the flute should have a wavelength of twice the length of the flute. This isn't exactly the case with a real flute though. For example, a…
naught101
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At what point in history did the relationship between pitch and frequency become well-known among musicians?

I think I've read that even very ancient cultures were able to discern that an octave difference corresponded to a pipe of twice the length, and so on. But at what point were musicians and composers able to understand that each note in a scale of…
Нет войне
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