Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #247136 in Books
• Published on: 1990-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 608 pages

Customer Reviews

The best book I have seen
The best book on this topic that I have seen. Benade is a master of writing clearly and giving great examples that help the reader to visualize or imagine why sound is acting the way it does. I am using it in my quest to design a new kind of guitar, and it is extremely helpful. I also have Horns String and Harmony by Benade. He is a nuclear physicist with a penchant for audio, and I am glad he beat his weapons into flutes.

Just about everything
This book is close to exhaustive and can be an excellent addition to any reference library.

Excellent Introduction to Musical Acoustics
This book is an excellent introduction to the topic. Benade explains the subject assuming that the reader has no background in science (good for musicians) and no background in music (good for scientists). He writes the book as if he's translating a mathematical proof into plain English. Benade starts from scratch (even the notion of pitch is considered alien) and builds wonderfully intuitive understandings. Yes, this is an old book, so if you are NOT new to this field (and not afraid of math) then you'd be more interested in one of the Rossing books. But on the plus side, because the book was written before Benade had access to modern laboratory techniques, the "experiments" described in the book are all simple to understand and can be done at home. Unlike the Rossing books (which I also highly recommend), Benade's book does not read like a textbook or a reference source. It is very easy-to-read, so you can actually benefit from just sitting down and reading it (though Benade does provide problems at the end of the chapter for the dedicated reader).

In response to one of the unfavorable reviews posted, I do not find any fault with Benade when he states (p. 66) that "lopping off the higher frequency ... harmonics does not alter the perceived pitch of the sound." In fact, this statement comes right after an in-depth explanation of how the higher frequency partials DETERMINE the pitch for INHARMONIC sounds (e.g. chimes and bells). Perhaps the reviewer was confused by Benade's terminology. As explained on p. 63, Benade uses the word "partial" generically to describe higher frequency components. Benade reserves the term "harmonics" for partials that have whole-number relationships.

I wouldn't use this work as a college textbook, but I would certainly add it to the students' list of additional recommended references.