This course focuses on acoustic musical instruments and offers all the tools that are needed for understanding, characterizing, designing and improving them. After describing their structure and function, we describe the physical and mathematical modeling of their sound generation mechanism, as well as their acoustic radiation. We then show how to characterize their vibrational and acoustic behavior through vibro-acoustic measurements. Finally, we show how to characterize their timbral behavior based on techniques of machine intelligence.

At the end of the course, the student will be able to:

interpret and design the role of each component of a musical instrument in sound generation;

perform measurements and analyses on musical instruments and interpret results;

identify the main components of the electrical analog circuit equivalent to the instrument under analysis.

Part 1: Acoustic Modeling of Musical Instruments

• Recap of the theory related to discrete vibrating systems;
• One-dimensional vibrating systems (strings);
• Two-dimensional vibrating systems (membranes and plates);
• Waves propagating in air and radiation from vibrating objects;
• Pipes and horns;
• Characterization of string instruments: guitar, violin and piano;
• vibrational analysis on musical instruments (laboratory);
• vibrational modeling of components of musical instruments (laboratory).

Part 2: Analysis and Characterization of Musical Instruments

• Characterization of reed-based wind instruments;
• Characterization of jet-based wind instruments;
• Characterization of drums and percussions;
• Geometric (laser) scanning, wrapping and modeling body structures
• Acoustic analysis (laboratory);
• Timbral analysis (laboratory);

There is no mandatory prerequisite, however the attendance of "Fundamentals of Vibrational Analysis and Vibroacoustics" (1st year, 2nd sem) is warmly suggested.

The exam is based on a written exam and an oral only for students who obtained a positive grade.