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Scientific American Library Series #4
The Science Of Musical Sound
Behind the creation of any musical sound lies the complex processes of physics, electronics, mathematics, and human perception. The fascinating interplay of these factors is the focus of John R. Pierce's The Science of Musical Sound, Revised Edition--a volume that covers the production of a single drumbeat and the wizardry of the latest recording and synthesizing techniques to explore where sound comes from and how we recognize and enjoy it as music.
242 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1983
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 18, 2016
John Pierce was an electrical engineer by training who was intrigued by musical sound. After a distinguished career in communications he delved into the intricacies of the sounds of music, culminating in the publishing of this book, The Science of Musical Sound, in 1983.
As the book jacket states, “His joy in the discovery that physics and mathematics can be sources of insight into understanding why we hear music as we do.” The book goes on to explain how we hear and what we can hear as we appreciate musical sound of all sorts, from the tinkling of the ivories to the percussive sounds of drums, and from the harmonies of the glockenspiel to the high-frequency tones of the piccolo.
John was a leading member of the Bell Laboratories team that came up with the basic techniques by which computers generate those musical sounds that formed a key, yet, familiar part, of the soundtracks of Star Wars and other movies.
Of interest to me, were the many contributions made in the field of psychoacoustics by scientists or engineers who weren’t, as John notes, “card-carrying psychologists.” Some of these contributing men of science included the great Hermann von Helmholtz, professor of anatomy and physiology at the University of Bonn, and later professor of physics at the University of Berlin. Helmholtz wrote the groundbreaking work, On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music, in 1863. Another key contributor was Wallace Clement Sabine, who founded the science of architectural acoustics early in the twentieth century. Sabine was a mathematics professor at Harvard. Irving Langmuir, who later became a Nobel laureate, was the first to study binaural hearing in depth. He was a physicist who worked on the detection of submarines during World War I. Another Nobel laureate, George von Bekesy, became interested in hearing during his tenure at the Hungarian Telephone System Research Laboratory. Harvey Fletcher and his colleagues employed “precise and effective electronic apparatus in studies of sound and hearing.” Fletcher viewed himself as a physicist and he served as president of the American Physical Society. Jan Schouten, another physicist, “first identified the phenomenon of residue pitch or periodicity pitch, through which we hear the correct pitch of musical sounds coming from a pocket transistor radio, even though the radio is physically incapable of producing sounds of low frequency.” And all three Bell Laboratories men, John Pierce, Ed David, and Max Mathews, who investigated computer generated sound, regarded themselves as electrical engineers, first and foremost.
Why have people with such diverse backgrounds contributed so much to the field of musical sound? John answers, “Chiefly, I think, because progress in our understanding of sound and sensation has resulted from new modes of experimentation made possible by the clear ideas and acute tools of physics and electrical communication.”
He adds, “New tools and new approaches led to new discoveries. Helmholtz worked with mechanical devices: tuning forks and resonators of blown glass. Bekesy and Fletcher worked with vacuum-tube devices of limited complexity. David Matthews, and I, and our [1980s] contemporaries, have had at our disposal the flexible power of the digital computer . . . Electrical engineering has provided the tools – vacuum tubes, then transistors, now digital computers – through which we gain a deeper understanding of sound and hearing [and which allows me, an electrical engineer,] to write about the psychoacoustics of musical sound.”
John was impressed by the piano and its flexibility to produce the widest range of frequencies of all other instruments, to produce a wide range of loudness, and for the ease in which it produces tones. As he says, “The piano is truly remarkable.”
I encourage you to read this book, written specifically for lay readers on the science behind musical sound, including discussions on pitch, loudness, masking, reverberation, timbre, consonance, and dissonance, to name a few. Pierce and his contemporaries built upon the work of many that went before them. As he notes, “It is common in science for followers to organize and express matters better than originators.”
And in this case, Pierce’s book is a much easier read than the pioneering works of the great Helmholtz.
Enjoy!
As the book jacket states, “His joy in the discovery that physics and mathematics can be sources of insight into understanding why we hear music as we do.” The book goes on to explain how we hear and what we can hear as we appreciate musical sound of all sorts, from the tinkling of the ivories to the percussive sounds of drums, and from the harmonies of the glockenspiel to the high-frequency tones of the piccolo.
John was a leading member of the Bell Laboratories team that came up with the basic techniques by which computers generate those musical sounds that formed a key, yet, familiar part, of the soundtracks of Star Wars and other movies.
Of interest to me, were the many contributions made in the field of psychoacoustics by scientists or engineers who weren’t, as John notes, “card-carrying psychologists.” Some of these contributing men of science included the great Hermann von Helmholtz, professor of anatomy and physiology at the University of Bonn, and later professor of physics at the University of Berlin. Helmholtz wrote the groundbreaking work, On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music, in 1863. Another key contributor was Wallace Clement Sabine, who founded the science of architectural acoustics early in the twentieth century. Sabine was a mathematics professor at Harvard. Irving Langmuir, who later became a Nobel laureate, was the first to study binaural hearing in depth. He was a physicist who worked on the detection of submarines during World War I. Another Nobel laureate, George von Bekesy, became interested in hearing during his tenure at the Hungarian Telephone System Research Laboratory. Harvey Fletcher and his colleagues employed “precise and effective electronic apparatus in studies of sound and hearing.” Fletcher viewed himself as a physicist and he served as president of the American Physical Society. Jan Schouten, another physicist, “first identified the phenomenon of residue pitch or periodicity pitch, through which we hear the correct pitch of musical sounds coming from a pocket transistor radio, even though the radio is physically incapable of producing sounds of low frequency.” And all three Bell Laboratories men, John Pierce, Ed David, and Max Mathews, who investigated computer generated sound, regarded themselves as electrical engineers, first and foremost.
Why have people with such diverse backgrounds contributed so much to the field of musical sound? John answers, “Chiefly, I think, because progress in our understanding of sound and sensation has resulted from new modes of experimentation made possible by the clear ideas and acute tools of physics and electrical communication.”
He adds, “New tools and new approaches led to new discoveries. Helmholtz worked with mechanical devices: tuning forks and resonators of blown glass. Bekesy and Fletcher worked with vacuum-tube devices of limited complexity. David Matthews, and I, and our [1980s] contemporaries, have had at our disposal the flexible power of the digital computer . . . Electrical engineering has provided the tools – vacuum tubes, then transistors, now digital computers – through which we gain a deeper understanding of sound and hearing [and which allows me, an electrical engineer,] to write about the psychoacoustics of musical sound.”
John was impressed by the piano and its flexibility to produce the widest range of frequencies of all other instruments, to produce a wide range of loudness, and for the ease in which it produces tones. As he says, “The piano is truly remarkable.”
I encourage you to read this book, written specifically for lay readers on the science behind musical sound, including discussions on pitch, loudness, masking, reverberation, timbre, consonance, and dissonance, to name a few. Pierce and his contemporaries built upon the work of many that went before them. As he notes, “It is common in science for followers to organize and express matters better than originators.”
And in this case, Pierce’s book is a much easier read than the pioneering works of the great Helmholtz.
Enjoy!
November 2, 2020
Understanding the title of the book is very important. This book is NOT about music but about musical sound. I expected to find a mathematical/scientific explanation for why Bach and Beethoven sound so great. Instead, I got details of why sound works as it does... kind of? Having reflected on the whole of the book, I'm not sure if I have ANYTHING new in my musical knowledge/ resources. Finally, as a possible summary of the core message of the book, John might be trying to tell us how great computers will be in expanding the music industry. Yes, this was exciting in 1983 when the book was published. Today, we already know and take as given everything that is in the book.
April 21, 2012
Read this many years ago, but came across a reference to it earlier today in the forward, written by Max Matthews, to the very impressive looking Musimathics. I'm digging into my vague memory of what he wrote to paraphrase what he says: essentially, all you need to read to understand computer music is the two volumes of Musimathics (on the list!) and this book. I'm adding this back to my to re-read stack. ;~)
January 8, 2021
Very technical, good reference
August 1, 2025
Set out to learn about the science of music, and immediately fell in love with the whole Scientific American Library Series. I discovered I already had one of them (The Timing of Biological Clocks) on my shelves, from a previous obsession. The series is from the 80s/90s, was apparently only available through a Book Subscription service, and can now only be found second hand. It's perfect informative science writing (not too dense, but also not in today's too rambly popular-science style) with lots of pretty graphs of of sine waves, frequency spectra and sound wave reflection geometries.
February 18, 2019
This book has been comprehensively reviewed so i will not belabor the point - As Max Matthews says in the foreward to Musimathics, they are two essential books on the physics of sound and the perception of music.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews