Fall 2003
9
These innovations led to the develop-
ment of the modern 12-tone musical
scale, upon which nearly all music is
based. Music and math have always
been intertwined, and modern-day en-
gineering has affected the creation of
music in numerous ways, especially the
field of acoustics.
time a sound will still audibly reverber-
ate after the sound source has stopped.
This reverb time works well with “Ro-
mantic, classical, rap, whatever,” ac-
cording to Goodman. Another essential
acoustics rule, says Goodman, is that
you “never want parallel walls.” These
create an effect called flutter echo, in
which sound gets
trapped bouncing
between two paral-
lel surfaces for a
long time without
being absorbed or
deflected. The
reflectivity of such
walls causes seri-
ous problems for
musicians and
must be counter-
acted.
and other places made for music. As re-
ported in the September 30, 2003 issue
of the Kansas City Star, a new acousti-
cian has been chosen to assist in the
design of Kansas City’s new perform-
ing arts center, scheduled to be built
next year. Yasuhisa Toyota, of Nagata
Acoustics in Japan, is famous for the
design of many buildings in Japan, and
more recently the Walt Disney Sym-
phony Hall in Los Angeles. The creation
of such a large and expensive acousti-
cal system is a long and complex pro-
cess involving the creation of computer
simulations, experimention with scale
models and training the facility’s staff.
Beyond optimizing the sound created
by musicians onstage, other consider-
ations include the noise created by ex-
ternal sources, such as highways, and
by mechanical systems within the build-
ing, such as ventilation systems. Use
and design of materials meant to block
external vibrations are important ele-
ments of the creation of such spaces.
Music and engineering have a long
history together. From the first pluck of
a string to the newest concert hall, the
expressive art that is music has been
inseparably tied to math and science.
There is more to music than the logical,
of course. “There is … a creative and
emotional side to music that cannot be
thought of logically,” said Lindh. “My
brother is an incredible musician but
can’t do algebra to save his life.” None-
theless, the endless march of engineer-
ing advances that have occurred over
the centuries has infinitely broadened
the artistic horizons open to modern
musicians, and there is no end in sight
to the progress that both fields will ex-
perience in the years to come.
Kansas City Performing Arts Center
Acoustics is the field of engineer-
ing that involves the manipulation of
sound waves within building spaces.
This is an especially crucial element in
the design of music recording studios,
performance halls and the like, where
the quality of the sound can determine
the success of the enterprise in ques-
tion. One of the most important acous-
tical issues is reverberation. Reverb is
the effect produced by the constant,
prolonged reflections of sound waves
in a room. This can serve to prolong the
time that a sound takes to fade away
after the source has stopped emitting
sound. In musical settings, a certain
amount of reverb is usually desirable,
for without any reverb, music often
sounds flat, dry, and empty. Too much,
reverb, however, can lead to a muddled,
indistinct sound. According to Allan
Goodman, an architectural engineering
faculty member who teaches a course
on acoustic systems, the optimum re-
verberation time for a concert hall is 1.7
seconds, “reverberation time” being the
Headphones
produce no reverb
and cars have very little, and these are
two of the most common places to find
music being played these days; thus, if
one wants reverb to be an element in
one’s music, it is important that a way
of recreating the effect of reverb is avail-
able. One simple way would be to record
one’s music in a space where the de-
sired reverberation exists, but such
spaces aren’t always available. This has
led to the electronic synthesis of rever-
beration effects. One device that has
arisen to meet this need is the spring
reverb, which can be found in many
guitar amplifiers. The audio signal pro-
duced by an electric guitar will be fed
into a spring, and the back-and-forth
vibration of the spring is fed back into
the original signal, which produces the
final sound emitted by the amp. The
spring’s vibration simulates the multiple
reflections of sound waves that create
reverb in rooms.
Reverb, along with many other as-
pects of acoustics, is a driving force in
the design of concert halls, music class-
rooms, recording studios, rock clubs,
 |