As sonic artists, we are concerned with, and work primarily with sound. Therefore. it is important we know about and understand sound works. This week, you will start to metaphorically dip your toes into the areas of acoustics and psychoacoustics.
Acoustics is concerned with the physics of sound. Acoustics is concerned with questions such as;
Psychoacoustics is concerned with human perceptions of sound, or said another way, how we hear and understand sound. The field of psychoacoustics has significant overlap with the fields of physiology and psychology. Psychoacoustics is concerned with questions such as;
On a rough or gross level, we could consider acoustics to be concerned with objective qualities of sound, and psychoacoustics to be concerned with subjective qualities of sound. (This idea of objective and subjective qualities will come back with many of the ways that we speak about sound, and the terms we use to define sound.)
Why do we care about acoustics as sonic artists? Hopefully this question’s answer is self evident. Sonic artists care about the field of acoustics because it dictates what is possible within the medium and an understanding of acoustics allows for greater control or manipulation of sound. Everything done as a sonic artist comes back to acoustics.
For this week, we are going to focus on fundamental principles of sound and acoustics. We will save psychoacoustics for a later week.
We will also be using an online e-book/resource published by the Indiana University Center for Electronic and Computer Music to supplement this information.
Please read all assigned pages within this resource carefully. There is a test at the end of the semester, and much of this material will make its way to this exam.
Please read: