Product Description

"Mathematics can be as effortless as humming a tune, if you know the tune," writes Gareth Loy. In Musimathics, Loy teaches us the tune, providing a friendly and spirited tour of the mathematics of music—a commonsense, self-contained introduction for the nonspecialist reader.

Volume 2 of Musimathics continues the story of music engineering begun in volume 1, focusing on the digital and computational domain. Loy goes deeper into the mathematics of music and sound, beginning with digital audio, sampling, and binary numbers, as well as complex numbers and how they simplify representation of musical signals. Chapters cover the Fourier transform, convolution, filtering, resonance, the wave equation, acoustical systems, sound synthesis, the short-time Fourier transform, and the wavelet transform. These subjects provide the theoretical underpinnings of today's music technology. The material in volume 1 is all preparatory to the subjects presented in this volume, although either volume can be read independently. Cross-references to volume 1 are provided for concepts introduced in the earlier volume, and additional mathematical orientation is offered where necessary. The topics are all subjects that contemporary composers, musicians, and music engineers have found to be important. The examples given are all practical problems in music and audio. The level of scholarship and the pedagogical approach also make Musimathics ideal for classroom use. Additional material can be found at a companion web site.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #146358 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 576 pages

Review
"Musimathics is destined to be required reading and a valued reference for every composer, music researcher, multimedia engineer, and anyone else interested in the interplay between acoustics and music theory. This is truly a landmark work of scholarship and pedagogy, and Gareth Loy presents it with quite remarkable rigor and humor."
—Stephen Travis Pope, CREATE Lab, Department of Music, University of California, Santa Barbara

"From his long and successful experience as a composer and computer-music researcher, Gareth Loy knows what is challenging and what is important. That comprehensiveness makes Musimathics both exciting and enlightening. The book is crystal clear, so that even advanced issues appear simple. Musimathics will be essential for those who want to understand the scientific foundations of music, and for anyone wishing to create or process musical sounds with computers."
—Jean-Claude Risset, Laboratoire de Mécanique et d'Acoustique, CNRS, France

"Music and mathematics enjoy many points of intersection. Just think of musical scales and number theory, or the impact of computers—both analog and digital—on the composition and creation of musical sounds. The second volume of Musimathics ably covers these and many other instances of this happy union: Fourier and wavelet transforms, natural and artificial reverberation, and much more."
—Manfred Schroeder, Professor of Physics, University of Goettingen, Germany

About the Author
Gareth Loy is a musician and award-winning composer. He has published widely and, during a long and successful career at the cutting edge of multimedia computing, has worked as a researcher, lecturer, programmer, software architect, and digital systems engineer. He is President of Gareth, Inc., a provider of software engineering and consulting services internationally.

Customer Reviews

A good book on musical signal processing concepts
If you are to really understand what is going on in this book you need volume one where the foundations are discussed. Likewise, volume one of Musimathics will often stop short of a truly complete explanation and say that further study will be picked up in volume two. Thus, these two volumes are actually just the halves of one book. However, if you are interested in musical signal processing, you probably need to read volume two. It covers much ground in depth, and gives numerous examples that are very practical and accessible for people who are working with musical and audio signals. The appendix has some useful tutorials and tables involving mathematics if you happen to be rusty. The following is the table of contents:

1 Digital Signals and Sampling 1
1.1 Measuring the Ephemeral 1
1.2 Analog-to-Digital Conversion 9
1.3 Aliasing 11
1.4 Digital-to-Analog Conversion 20
1.5 Binary Numbers 22
1.6 Synchronization 28
1.7 Discretization 28
1.8 Precision and Accuracy 29
1.9 Quantization 29
1.10 Noise and Distortion 33
1.11 Information Density of Digital Audio 38
1.12 Codecs 40
1.13 Further Refinements 42
1.14 Cultural Impact of Digital Audio 46

2 Musical Signals 49
2.1 Why Imaginary Numbers? 49
2.2 Operating with Imaginary Numbers 51
2.3 Complex Numbers 52
2.4 de Moivre's Theorem 62
2.5 Euler's Formula 64
2.6 Phasors 68

2.7 Graphing Comlpex Signals 86
2.8 Spectra of Complex Sampled Signals 87
2.9 Multiplying Phasors 89
2.10 Graphing Complex Spectra 92
2.11 Analytic Signals 95

3 Spectral Analysis and Synthesis 103
3.1 Introduction to the Fourier Transform 103
3.2 Discrete Fourier Transform 103
3.3 Discrete Fourier Transform in Action 125
3.4 Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform 134
3.5 Analyzing Real-World Signals 138
3.6 Windowing 141
3.7 Fast Fourier Transform 145
3.8 Properties of the Discrete Fourier Transform 147
3.9 A Practical Hilbert Transform 154

4 Convolution 159
4.1 Rolling Shutter Camera 159
4.2 Defining Convolution 161
4.3 Numerical Examples of Convolution 163
4.4 Convolving Spectra 168
4.5 Convolving Sigals 172
4.6 Convolution and the Fourier Transform 180
4.7 Domain Symmetry between Signals and Spectra 180
4.8 Convolution and Sampling Theory 187
4.9 Convolution and Windowing 187
4.10 Correlation Functions 191

5 Filtering 195
5.1 Tape Recorder as a Model of Filtering 195
5.2 Introduction to Filtering 199
5.3 A Sample Filter 201
5.4 Finding the Frequency Response 203
5.5 Linearity and Time Invariance of Filters 217
5.6 FIR Filters 218
5.7 IIR Filters 218
5.8 Canonical Filter 219
5.9 Time Domain Behavior of Filters 219
5.10 Filtering as Convolution 222
5.11 Z Transform 224
5.12 Z Transform of the General Difference Equation 232
5.13 Filter Families 244

6 Resonance 263
6.1 The Derivative 263
6.2 Differential Equations 276
6.3 Mathematics of Resonance 280

7 The Wave Equation 299
7.1 One-Dimensional Wave Equation and String Motion 299
7.2 An Example 307
7.3 Modeling Vibration with Finite Difference Equations 310
7.4 Striking Points, Plucking Points, and Spectra 319

8 Acoustical Systems 325
8.1 Dissipation and Radiation 325
8.2 Acoustical Current 326
8.3 Linearity of Frictional Force 329
8.4 Inertance, Inductive Reactance 332
8.5 Compliance, Capacitive Reactance 333
8.6 Reactance and Alternating Current 334
8.7 Capacitive Reactance and Frequency 335
8.8 Inductive Reactance and Frequency 336
8.9 Combining Resistance, Reactance, and Alternating Current 336
8.10 Resistance and Alternating Current 337
8.11 Capacitance and Alternating Current 337
8.12 Acoustical Impedance 339
8.13 Sound Propagation and Sound Transmission 344
8.14 Input Impedance: Fingerprinting a Resonant System 351
8.15 Scattering Junctions 357

9 Sound Synthesis 363
9.1 Forms of Synthesis 363
9.2 A Graphical Patch Language for Synthesis 365
9.3 Amplitude Modulation 384
9.4 Frequency Modulation 389
9.5 Vocal Synthesis 409
9.6 Synthesizing Concert Hall Acoustics 425
9.7 Physical Modeling 433
9.8 Source Models and Receiver Models 449

10 Dynamic Spectra 453
10.1 Gabor's Elementary Signal 454
10.2 The Short-Time Fourier Transform 459
10.3 Phase Vocoder 486
10.4 Improving on the Fourier Transform 496
10.5 Psychoacoustic Audio Encoding 502

A.1 About Algebra 513
A.2 About Trigonometry 514
A.3 Series and Summations 517
A.4 Trigonometric Identities 518
A.5 Modulo Arithmetic and Congruence 522
A.6 Finite Difference Approximations 523
A.7 Walsh-Hadamard Transform 525
A.8 Sampling, Reconstruction, and Sinc Function 526
A.9 Fourier Shift Theorem 528
A.10 Spectral Effects of Ring Modulation 529
A.11 Derivation of the Reflection Coefficient 530

Excellent
The book is simply useful. Musicians and teachers can review their knowledge base. Novices have the possibility to learn the math-based laws of music by means of a non-academic language. Above all, the book is extended into a second volume for an in-depth learning.