Schedule and Online Lecture Notes (subject to change)

• Week 1:
  • Introduction to Music 175
  • Sound:
    • Sound: what is sound? acoustics vs. psychoacoustics.
    • Waves: time representation of sound, sinusoids, partials/overtones, harmonics.
    • Spectrum: frequency representation of sound, fourier analysis, spectrograms, periodicity
  • Pd patches: harmonicity.pd, pitchFreq.pd, pitchFreq.pd.
  • Reading: Cook, Chapter 4.

• Week 2:
  • Hearing
    • Sound Level: pressure, power, intensity, dB scale
    • Ear Physiology: The ear and how it works
    • Loudness: phons, sones, Fletcher-Munson equal loudness curves, masking
  • Pd patches: db.pd, FrequencyAndLoudness.pd, max.pd.
  • Reading: Cook, Chapter 1 and 6.

• Week 3:
  • Hearing in Time and Space
    • Time and Space: “cocktail party effect”, binaural masking, precedence effect, reverberation, localization.
  • Reading: Cook, Chapter 8.

• Week 4:
  • Hearing in Time and Space (cont.)
  • Field trip: Audio Spatialization Lab (Spat Lab), Calit2 (cancelled, COVID 19).
    • Spat Lab map (see room in yellow, 1604A)
  • Quiz 1: Tuesday April 21, 2020 (last 45 mins of class)
  • Student paper presentations Hearing in Time and Space
    • studentname: “A General Model for Spatial Processing of Sounds”
    • sudentname: “Comparative Study of European Concert Halls”
    • studentname: “Synchronization in Performed Ensemble Music”

• Week 5:
  • Student paper presentations Hearing in Time and Space
    • studentname: “Monaural Detection of Phase Difference Between Clicks”
    • studentname: “The CIPIC HRTF Database”
    • studentname: “Discriminability of Time-Reversed Pairs of Clicks”
    • studentname: “The effects of neighborhood views containing multiple environmental features on road traffic noise perception at dwellings”

  • Cognitive Psychology and Music
    • Principles of perception: unconscious inference vs. direct perception (Gibson), size and loudness constancy, perceptual completion, gestalt grouping principles.
  • Reading: Cook, chapter 3

• Week 6:
  • Timbre
    • Timbre: average spectral shape, formants, missing harmonics, time variation.
  • Reading: Cook chapter 7.
  • Student paper presentations Timbre/Signal Discrimination
    • studentname: “Multidimensional Perceptual Scaling of Musical Timbres”
    • studentname: “Timbre Space as a Musical Control Structure”
    • studentname: “Discrimination of Transient Signals Having Identical Energy Spectra.”
    • studentname: “Squeezing speech into the deaf ear.”
    • studentname: “Auditory Illusions and Confusions”
    • studentname: “Hearing Lips and Seeing Voices”

• Week 7:
  • Ambiguity in Music
    • Auditory Streaming: ambiguity, common fate, separation with apparent motion, Shepard tones, tritone paradox
  • Quiz 2: May 14, 2020 (Thursday, last 45 minutes)
  • Reading: Cook chapter 10.

• Week 8:
  • Pitch
    • Pitch Perception: place theory of pitch, repetition pitch, pitch paradox, jnd, mel scale
  • Reading: Cook, chapter 5
  • Student paper presentations Pitch (Perception)
    • studentname: “Periodicity and Pitch Perception.”
    • studentname: “Circularity in Judgments of Relative Pitch.”
    • studentname: “Octave Generalization and Tune Recognition.”
    • studentname: “The Tritone Paradox: Correlate with the Listener's Vocal Range for Speech”

• Week 9:
  • Pitch cont.
    • Pitch 2: jnd, mels scale, pitch spaces
    • Consonance: scales, periodicity, intervals, beating, Rameau and inversions, pitch errors in scales, cents
  • Reading: Cook chapter 13 and 14
  • Student paper presentations Pitch (Consonance)
    • studentname “Harmony and Nonharmonic Partials.”
    • studentname “Beat Theories of Musical Consonance.”
    • studentname “Tonal Consonance and Critical Bandwidtch”
    • studentname “Attaining Consonance in Arbitrary Scales.”

  • Student paper presentations Pitch (Scales)
    • studentname: “Interval-Class Content in Equally Tempered Pitch-Class Sets: Common Scales Exhibit Optimum Tonal Consonance.”
    • studentname: “Local Consonance and the Relationship Between Timbre and Scale.”
    • studentname: “Theoretical and Experimental Exploration of the Bohlen–Pierce Scale.”
    • studentname: “More than Just Notes: Psychoacoustics and Composition”
    • studentname “Calculation of the acoustical properties of triadic harmonies.”

• Week 10:
  • Student paper presentations Bioacoustics (Animal Hearing/Perception)
    • studentname: “Bat echolocation calls facilitate social communication”
    • studentname: “Extremely high frequency sensitivity in a 'simple' ear” (Hearing in moths)
    • studentname: “Hearing in the Elephant: Absolute Sensitivity, Frequency Discrimination, and Sound Localization”
    • studentname: “Fin Whale Sound Reception Mechanisms”
  • Quiz 3: June 4 2020 (last 45 minutes)