|
|
The Online Guitar Store - Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics: Second, Revised Edition
|
List Price: $19.95
Our Price: $13.57
Your Save: $ 6.38 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
|
Average Customer Rating:  
|
|
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 781.2
EAN: 9780486264844
ISBN: 048626484X
Label: Dover Publications
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 608
Publication Date: 1990-11-01
Publisher: Dover Publications
Studio: Dover Publications
|
|
|
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
Landmark book by leading expert, hailed for its astonishingly clear, delightfully readable explication of everything acoustical important to music-making. "Comprehensive...rigorous...well-organized ...will surely be the text of choice."—American Scientist. "Recommended for music lovers and audiophiles"—Stereo Review. Over 300 illustrations. Examples, experiments and questions conclude each chapter.
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: I like this book, value it as a reference, but it's outdated
Comment: Long ago this was a standard text on musical acoustics. I still keep it on my shelf of acoustics books, but would caution anyone starting out that the book is very outdated in style, choice of topics, and focus. That said, I find it often handy to have more than one textbook style to study material from. Smooths out the choices of topics and the idiosyncrasies of the authors.
So, if you're looking to supplement an acoustics text, or looking at the history of acoustics, go for this book. For a starting textbook you'd be better served elsewhere. Rossing for example.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The best book I have seen
Comment: The best book on this topic that I have seen. Benade is a master of writing clearly and giving great examples that help the reader to visualize or imagine why sound is acting the way it does. I am using it in my quest to design a new kind of guitar, and it is extremely helpful. I also have Horns String and Harmony by Benade. He is a nuclear physicist with a penchant for audio, and I am glad he beat his weapons into flutes.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Just about everything
Comment: This book is close to exhaustive and can be an excellent addition to any reference library.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent Introduction to Musical Acoustics
Comment: This book is an excellent introduction to the topic. Benade explains the subject assuming that the reader has no background in science (good for musicians) and no background in music (good for scientists). He writes the book as if he's translating a mathematical proof into plain English. Benade starts from scratch (even the notion of pitch is considered alien) and builds wonderfully intuitive understandings. Yes, this is an old book, so if you are NOT new to this field (and not afraid of math) then you'd be more interested in one of the Rossing books. But on the plus side, because the book was written before Benade had access to modern laboratory techniques, the "experiments" described in the book are all simple to understand and can be done at home. Unlike the Rossing books (which I also highly recommend), Benade's book does not read like a textbook or a reference source. It is very easy-to-read, so you can actually benefit from just sitting down and reading it (though Benade does provide problems at the end of the chapter for the dedicated reader).
In response to one of the unfavorable reviews posted, I do not find any fault with Benade when he states (p. 66) that "lopping off the higher frequency ... harmonics does not alter the perceived pitch of the sound." In fact, this statement comes right after an in-depth explanation of how the higher frequency partials DETERMINE the pitch for INHARMONIC sounds (e.g. chimes and bells). Perhaps the reviewer was confused by Benade's terminology. As explained on p. 63, Benade uses the word "partial" generically to describe higher frequency components. Benade reserves the term "harmonics" for partials that have whole-number relationships.
I wouldn't use this work as a college textbook, but I would certainly add it to the students' list of additional recommended references.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An Outstanding Book, Designed to Make You Think
Comment: While Benade's first book, "Horns Strings and Harmony", has some errors which he himself later acknowledged, "Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics" is one of the seminal books in the field. That doesn't mean that it is perfect in every respect, but it introduces a broad range of concepts in musical acoustics without the use of advanced mathematics, in a writing style that will appeal to the musician in addition to the scientist. The fine details of his theories regarding psychoacoustics, particularly pitch perception, have been challenged. But his general concepts are well accepted, and he presents them in a way that makes the reader think. His descriptions of experimental techniques (which generally aren't very complicated) have inspired me and others to repeat his experiments. Sometimes, results don't agree - that's when you have to think. Psychoacoustics relies on neurology and psychology, two sciences that, despite much brilliant work over the last 100 years, are still in their infancy. So, you can't judge his theories on psychoacoustics in the same light as his description of wave propagation, room modes, and perturbation functions in clarinets.
As a musician and an engineer, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in how music and physics intersect. This is not the book to answer all your questions - it is the book to get you started on asking the right questions.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
