Apart from physics, I love music and I want to learn about musical acoustics.
I know some things, but the problem is that most of musical acoustics books are written for musicians. That means that there're no demonstrations, and the physical concepts are explained so briefly. You can usually find formulas for the vibrating string or tubes, frequencies of the notes, etc. But I know that already!. On the other hand, acoustics books doesn't include information about musical acoustics. Or the basics, again.
I'm trying to find a musical acoustics book (or books, or articles) which fulfill:
- Written for physicist. I want demonstrations of the formulas, even if they're sketched.
- Complete information about musical instruments. Not only vibrating strings / tube formulas. I want also information about vibrating membranes and metals, application of the formulas to particular cases (for example, difference between violin and viola, or clarinet and saxophone).
- Application of acoustics/waves concepts to music. For example, acoustic impedance, or diffraction.
- Basic concepts about sonority.
- Tuning system. Differences of tuning system between instruments.
Of course, I've studied waves in my undergraduate course. I know about solving the wave equation for a particular case with initial conditions, wave packets, Fourier analysis…
Best Answer
As someone working in the field I recommend to start with The physics of musical instruments by Rossing and Flectcher. There is also an extension called The non-linear physics of musical instruments. I also recommend Cremer's The physics of the violin, and Mechanics of Musical In- struments edited by A. Hirschberg, J. Kergomard, and G. Weinreich. For futher papers on individual instruments check for example the references in my master's thesis http://lib.tkk.fi/Dipl/2012/urn100725.pdf
The trouble is that a lot of the research in the recent years has't been put to a single book..
Henna