Chapter 3 Musical Sound: Section 3.1 (3.1.1-3.1.4)

The purpose of Chapter 3 is to familiarize the readers who do not have a decent music background, me, for example, with the concepts of frequency and pitch, tones and notes, duration, score, time signature, intervals, scales, octaves, major and minor keys, fundamentals and partials, harmonics, timbre and so on, and to facilitate the readers to learn the language of understanding music as a foundation for the subsequent chapters. I assume I am the only one in this room that does not know how to read the Western musical notations. I am quite nervous that whether I can pick it up in one week.

· 3.1 Concepts

3.1.1 Context

This part declares the purpose of this chapter, the importance of learning the common vocabulary of music. This part did not exist in Chapter 2, which pretty much directly jumps into the topic and starts explaining the basic concept. As the context is included in this chapter, a brief introduction on how section 3.1 is organized would help the readers to sort through the relations among all the terms covered in this chapter.

3.1.2 Tones and Notes

The example that piccolo has higher fundamental frequencies than those of a flue and thus it is higher pitched closely bonds fundamental frequencies and pitches together. However, I guess most readers might have the expectation to know WHY. A sentence/clause explains the relation between the shape of flute and the frequencies of its tones might solve the problem. Actually this might be a good example to put in Chapter 2. Later when sharp and flat are first introduced on page 3, it says each black key can be called by one of two names and gives an example. This may raise readers’ question. It might be better to say they are musically different. The example given below Figure 3.2 Piano or MIDI keyboard makes me feel a little bit unorganized. It talks about middle C, and then jumps to “the standard reference point for tuning a piano is the A above middle C” and starts talking about the frequency of 440Hz and 880Hz, which we just talked about at the end of last page. I am wondering if there is a way to combine this part the one that talks about octave, last paragraph on page 2, together in some way. At the very end of 3.1.2, it talks about accidentals, which we already mentioned earlier. As this paragraph is kind of short and sudden, it wouldn’t hurt to move it up to the middle of last page where we talked about the black keys and sharp and flat for the first time to make this section more organized.

Minor Errors:

- In the beginning sentence of the 4^th paragraph of 3.1.2 on page 2, it says “as described in Chapter 1, tones…” which actually should be Chapter 2 now.

- Most of the accidentals in this chapter are not superscript, but that of the D flat in the middle of page 3 is. It might be good to keep consistent.

- On top of page 4, equation 3.1, the bar of the square root sign goes too long/ it should not go all the way over the wavy equal sign.

3.1.3 Music versus Noise

This section is about how music different from other sound, such as noise. I am confused when it says “sounds that are combinations of harmonic frequencies make patters that are pleasing,” in fact, however, C, E, and G are not harmonic to each other as defined. I also found the last sentence on page 5, “these physical properties result in instrument having a characteristic range of frequencies and harmonic”, wasn’t very clear. Isn’t timbre something that is not related to the pitches but anything else? Different instruments do have distinct timbre, but not necessarily range of frequencies. The amplitude envelope part is easy to follow.

I do wonder why we didn’t put this part at the beginning of this chapter so that we won’t jump from a specific topic on tones and notes to a broader one on music or even sound in general, and then back to another specific theoretical topic in 3.1.4 Scales.

3.1.4 Scales

Overall this section is not difficult to understand except the pentatonic scales, but hard to follow up. I did not find the technical names for the notes on a diatonic scale very helpful since we never really used it later anyway. The table for the pattern of whole and half steps for various scales is quite intimidating, but with the help of the Scale Generator, it is much better. I still need some time to familiarize with the material covered.

- Max Demo: Scale Generator

This learning supplement is awesome! It must be very helpful for readers who are new to piano keyboard. Under programming mode it is even more exciting. Now I found why we used the patterns such as 2212221 to play.