Hear The Music

In previous portions of this five-part series, we discussed the acoustics of musical instruments and in most cases we saw these same general acoustic principles applied to the realm of hearing aids and speech acoustics. This week, I would like to turn to the performance venue and how the lowly pinna effect can be of assistance. Close your eyes and

  In the previous parts of this 5-part blog, we discussed quarter, half wavelength resonators, and impedance and damping. In this part, we will describe why some musical instruments have a flare or horn. The formal name of this acoustic principle is called the acoustic transformer effect, but many just call it the “horn effect”. The horn not only makes

In part 1 and part 2 of this 5-part blog series, we discussed the features of quarter wavelength resonators (brass instruments) and half wavelength resonators (stringed instruments and most woodwind instruments). This part has to do, not with what the frequencies of the resonances are, but the magnitude or amplitude of the resonances. We have all learned about impedance when it

Last week we discussed the characteristics of the quarter wavelength resonator and its role in musical acoustics (as well as in behind the ear hearing aids and our vocal tracts for those speech scientists out there). Quarter wavelength resonances are found in tubes that are “open” at one end and “closed” at the other end. A feature of a quarter

Standing waves and ¼ wavelength resonators. Part 1 of 5: I have always found it interesting that the various acoustic principles that are at play with hearing aids, are the same principles that rear their sometimes ugly heads in the realm of speech acoustics and in musical acoustics. For those readers whose background is audiology or speech sciences, you won’t

Look at any North American audiology clinic and you will typically find the client sitting in a sound-treated booth and the audiologist sitting either in an adjacent booth or in a quiet room outside the booth. Now, get on a plane and go to Zurich, Berlin, or Florence, and the approach is quite different. Typically you will see one booth,

In my previous post I talked about mindfulness and how it may be useful to minimize the effects of tinnitus that a person may experience. I defined mindfulness according to the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, who wrote that mindfulness is “an awareness, cultivated by paying attention in a sustained and particular way- on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally.” In

Marshall:    “Good morning. Come on in, and we’ll get to work”…. “… so after everything that you just told me, your main concern appears to be your tinnitus, right?” Musician:   “Yes, I just told you that!” Marshall:     “Can you describe your tinnitus a bit more to me?” Musician:    “It’s B flat with two overtones; F# and A.”

I was helping a friend move over the weekend and actually ended up lifting couches that were almost as heavy as one of the rocks from Stonehenge.  There were two differences between my weekend experience and those of 3500-5000 years ago when the stones for Stonehenge were moved to their current location. One difference was that I was just moving the couch

Researchers at Bielefeld University in Denmark have found evidence that suggests why high-frequency treble notes are written higher up and nearer to the top of the treble clef whereas the lower-frequency bass notes are found nearer the bottom.  Historically it was thought to be metaphorical since the notes could just as easily been represented in the reverse order with higher-frequency