Name: Fundamentals of musical acoustics
ISBN: 9781306363587

Fundamentals of musical acoustics

Landmark book by leading expert, hailed for its astonishingly clear, delightfully readable explication of everything acoustical important to music-making. "Comprehensive... rigorous... well-organized... will surely be the text of choice." {u2014} American Scientist. "Recommended for music lovers and audiophiles" {u2014} Stereo Review. Over 300 illustrations. Examples, experiments, and questions conclude each chapter.

What Hacker News says

skew-aberrationJul 2026

I have to highly recommend the book 'Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics' for mathematical/physical explanations of sound and music. Bells having multiple resonant modes, tuning kettle drums, how string materials and plucking methods changes harmonic profiles, why having lots of high frequency harmonics sounds bright (and electric guitars, pianos optimise for this), why sounds without high frequency harmonics sound hollow (nylon strings), virtual pitch, acoustics of rooms, etc.

My impression is that most sounds have their effect on us due to psychological association with familiar sources of those sounds, and that melody and harmony are fundamentally more subjective - they depend on looser associations with motion, mood, the human voice, the changes and developments of sounds in our environment.

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throwawayForMe2Jan 2025

Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics by Benade is a great Dover book for those interested in musical instruments.

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emptybitsNov 2018

I hear you. My $0.25 ... I bet the expert authors of many music theory books would be capable of thinking in mathematical terms but (now I'm guessing) there is likely some undeserved "ew, yuck, math!" culture in the arts so rather than turn off their audience, they avoid talking about the quantitative underpinnings of why things sound the way they do.

Two more enjoyable books on the math and physics of music (though, again, probably not far enough up the tree of abstraction for chords):

"The Science of Musical Sound" by Pierce (lovely little book, not too deep though, quite coffee tableable)

"Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics" by Benade (old book, considered a classic, reads like a science text)

Good luck!

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schrofflJul 2026

Are you talking about "Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics" by Arthur H. Benade? I'm interested in buying the book, but I'm not sure which one you mean. Do you perhaps even have the ISBN?

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