Vienna Talk 2010 on Music Acoustics "Bridging the Gaps"      September 19–21

Motivation

Over the past few decades, thanks to the advent of computers and ever-increasing computer power, a number of scientific tools and computational methods have been developed to tackle open questions in musical acoustics. Some of those tools are indeed currently being used by some instrument makers. However, most of the results of current scientific research could be helpful for musicians and instrument makers, but these have been badly marketed or simply not accepted because of their complexity. Similarly, there are issues that musicians and instrument makers have with either the instruments themselves, the sound they produce or the playing technique, that have not yet been addressed by research, but are nevertheless possible to be addressed and potentially solved.

The objective of this conference is to bring together musicians, instrument makers and the scientific community, with the following aims: on the one hand, musicians and instrument makers will present current problems and issues for which they would like to have a computational tool to help solving them. On the other hand, the scientific community will present tools that already exist, and at the same time get feedback from the musicians and instrument makers on how they could be improved.

Musicians, instrument makers and scientists will be encouraged to discuss the many possible ways in which musical acoustics could support music, including (but not limited to):

• Teaching and practicing: Tools that could provide real time feedback to the student who is learning to play an instrument on parameters such as playing technique and sound colour could help the teacher show the student in a more objective and tangible way how he/she could improve the sound and playing technique.
• Instrument manufacture and development: Tools that measure the instrument itself during the different stages of its making could help the instrument maker assess its quality. Simulation tools could help him/her make changes or improvements without having to go through a costly and time consuming trial and error process.
• Instrument quality: Hard-to-find defects such as blocks or cracks inside musical instruments can affect their response and sound. Tools designed to detect such defects could help the player find and solve problems. Real time feedback could be helpful in improving the sound and playing technique.
• Acoustical documentation of historical instruments: due to preservation arrangements one is restricted in the use of measuring methods. Tools that could measure the acoustics of historical instruments in a non-intrusive way could lead to new perspectives in organological research and the reconstruction of historical instruments.