MUS 107 MUSICAL ACOUSTICS

The Science of Sound: How do musical instruments produce sound? How can sounds be captured, recorded, and reproduced? What makes some sounds pleasing to the ear, and others painful? Acoustics, the physics of sound, explores these and other questions. The course explores how musical instruments (including the human voice) produce music, reveals the mathematical relationships between the construction of these instruments and the resulting sound waves, considers how the listening environment can alter sound, and explores techniques for capturing, recording, and reproducing sound. The course also explores the anatomy and physiology of the human ear, how it collects and transmits sound to the brain, and how the human mind perceives these signals as sound and music. Students will learn the fundamentals of sound engineering, microphone choice and placement, digital recording, and editing and playback. As an introduction to musical acoustics, the course requires no background in either science or music. Open to first-year students and sophomores, and to others with permission of the instructor.