Acoustics: Sound Creation & Propagation

From Advancing Music Theory
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This lesson is part of the Fundamentals of Sound & Music module.

Objectives

  • Student will understand the basic nature of sound as vibration and how it propagates through a medium.
  • Student will understand the concepts of frequency/amplitude and how they relate to pitch, loudness, and the media through which sounds travel.
  • Student will be able to describe sound based on a visual representation on a spectrogram, time-frequency graph, or oscilloscope trace.
  • Student will identify the basic components of musical sound: pitch (melody vs. harmony), texture, rhythm/meter (duration), timbre.

Resources

Readings

Listening or Videos

Tools

Class Activities

  • Discussion and definition of the physical properties of sound and how it is created
  • Play sine waves at different frequencies: discuss frequency, pitch, period, amplitude (show on spectrograms/oscilloscopes)
  • Play different sounds/instruments on spectrogram, oscilloscope, and time/frequency graph: compare and contrast
  • Discussion of vibration, frequency, and tension using strings demonstration

Assignments

Files:

  • Acoustics and Hearing Worksheet

Notes