Dan Boye, Physics Department, Davidson College
daboye@davidson.edu
http://webphysics.davidson.edu/faculty/dmb/Welcome.html
Abstract
A general course covering digital music basics, electronic synthesis of musical instruments, room acoustics, CD and DVD players, and compressed data formats has been developed to draw upon the penchant of college students for music and computer technology. Non-science majors populate this course at Davidson College to satisfy an elective or a core requirement in the traditional liberal arts curriculum. Students directly apply material covered in the course to daily experiences and to musical performances they are required to attend. This presentation will briefly describe the course structure and focus on several interactive web-based sound exercises and demonstrations that examine acoustical and psychoacoustical phenomena. Interactivity is achieved through the use of Java-based “Physlets” (developed at Davidson), JavaScript, and streaming of audio clips. Currently available time and frequency domain visualization plugins for popular media players (Windows Media Player, WinAmp), while imaginative and colorful, do not lend themselves to scientific measurement. New measurement-friendly visualization plugins are being developed at Davidson. These plugins will be described and made available for download.
Sound Physlet JScripts
SoundOut Physlet
Demonstrations
Physlets Homepage
Psychophysics Exercises
Octave
matching
Just Noticeable
Difference
(pitch)
Auditory
masking
Windows Media Player
Download and install Windows Media Player . (Windows 98, 2000, ME and XP only)
MusTech Visualization
1. Download and
copy file to the Visualizations folder in C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player
2. Add visualization in the Tools/Options/Visualizations
menu.
3. Select MusTech visualization from drop down menu via
View/Visualization menu.