Acoustics at UNSW This site at the University of New South Wales has great material on the acoustics of musical instruments, including the didjeridu. A good place to learn about current research topics in acoustics.
Dan Russell's Animations Many nice animations illustrating the physics of sound. Be sure to look at the section on 'superpostion of two waves'.
PhET Java simulations from CU's physics education research group. Check out Masses and Springs, Waves on a String, Fourier, and Sound.
Maqam World All about Arabic music. Illustrates many scales with non-western intervals.
Pat Missin Comprehensive site about harmonicas. The section on tunings has audio examples comparing just and equal tempered tuning.
Kyle Gann The web site of a composer interested in 'microtonalilty'. This link is to his section on tuning, which has many nice audio examples.
Ellen Fullman Inventor of the 'long string instrument,' the only string instrument that uses longitudinal waves.
Aeolian Harps About string instruments that are played by the wind. Includes sound clips.
Art Tatum The jazz piano master on You Tube.
Irene Orleansky playing the Chapman Stick on You Tube.
Adriana Breukink Web site of a maker of recorders, including the giant sub-contra bass.
Loeki Stardust Quartet Two videos on recorders, one showing two tenors and the other on showing Adriana Breukink's sub-contra bass.
Java Simulations by Paul Falstad. We used the Coupled Oscillations applet in homework #7, and discussed the Bar Waves and Circular Membrane Waves applets in class.
Lee Hite on the design of wind chimes.
Bill Hibbert on the acoustics of bells.
Cartwright and Piro Listen to the first and second sound demos at the bottom of the page. They show that you can still perceive pitch when the fundamental and first four harmonics are missing.
Jo Haazen playing the carillon in Mechelen, Belgium.
Institute of Sound and Vibration Click on Wave Basics and then The Nature of Waves to see great animations of acoustic waves in pipes. Also, under Standing Waves look at The Nature of Standing Waves and Open-ended Pipe.
Lecture notes from Professor John Galm for October 25.
Plastic Flute How to make a 5-hole flute from PVC pipe, from a web site on Native American engineering.
Carbon-14 dating of 9000 year-old Chinese flutes, with sound clips.
Red Crowned Crane Ulna bones of this bird were used to make Chinese flutes 9000 years ago.
30,000 year old ivory flute from southern Germany (this link will only work on campus).
Ercan Irmak plays a solo on the ney, an end-blown flute from the Middle East.
Mozart played on beer bottles by a roller skater. See link to Dan Russell's site (above) for info on the normal modes of a beer bottle.
Ocarina videos This link also has a demonstration of a theorbo, a type of bass lute. The theorbo was very large because it was developed before wire-wound bass strings were avialable.
Xun A Chinese vessel flute, with an excellent sound clip. This instrument differs from the western ocarina in that it does not have a duct.
Chalumeau An early clarinet-like instrument.
Flute materials You can't hear any difference between flutes made of different materials, because it is the air that vibrates, not the flute.
Baroque Flutes These have tiny sound holes, unlike the later Boehm flute.
Giant saxophone Like every sax, it has giant post-Boehm sound holes.
Boehm revolution An article about Boehm versus Baroque flutes, from the UNSW group.
Miles Davis & John Coltrane at You Tube. I was going to show this when we talked about the saxophone, but we didn't get to it.
Duck calls Click on 'listen to calls' and then 'J-Frame' to hear what an expert can do with the duck call I had in class.
Crumhorn A reed instrument that first appeared in the 14th century in Europe. It had a straight bore, small finger holes, and a capped beating reed. Listen to the sound clips.
Lip reed video This page from UNSW describes the acoustics of brass instruments. Includes a slow motion video of lip reeds in action.
Alphorns Large conical bore valve-less horns from Switzerland. They can play a complete harmonic series.
Vocal chords Beautiful videos of human vocal chords in action. Some are stroboscopic so you can see the chords vibrating.
Vocal tract models made of clear plastic. When connected to the reed from a duck call, they make recognizable vowel sounds. Click on the photos for sound clips.
Throat Singing A website about throat singing in Tuva and elsewhere.
Human Ear Animation showing the function of the main parts of the ear.
Ear Hair Cells The mechanics of the sound sensitive hair cells in the ear.
Evolution See example #2 for a brief discussion of the evolution of the mammalian ear.
Intro to Electronics 1, 2, 3 from Prof. Bob Holtzworth at the University of Washington.
Time Line A concise history of electronics.
Cicruit Diagrams of old guitar amplifiers. One of many reasons why musicians care about electronics.
Sharon Isbin Web site of classical guitarist extraordinaire Sharon Isbin. She hides a battery powered wireless microphone inside her guitar.
Ozomatli Video of the latin-rock-hiphop phenomenon Ozomatli. They use many acoustic instruments, and just about every electronic technology known to humanity.
MP3 Handbook An intro to digital audio and MP3 compression. See especially Part 3.
Edison Phonograph Demo of an Edison cylinder player on You Tube. No electronics involved!
Music Sound Effects Theory of sound effects by Scott Lehman
Wah Wah The technology behind wah wah pedals, and their connection to vocal formants
Wah Wah demo at You Tube
There are other useful links on the home page. To access home pages from previous weeks, scroll down to the bottom of the current home page.
Physics 1240 home page