[CAUT] Anechoic chamber - experiments

Scott E. Thile scott.thile at murraystate.edu
Fri Jun 18 12:35:09 MDT 2010


Wow, this could be really interesting, Jim. What a fantastic opportunity! 

 

Keep us posted!

Scott

 

Scott E. Thile
Piano/Instrument Technician
---------------------------
Dept. of Music, Murray State University
504 Fine Arts Building, Murray, KY 42071
Office Phone: 270-809-4396
http://campus.murraystate.edu/staff/scott.thile/

 

 

From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Jim
Busby
Sent: Friday, June 18, 2010 1:12 PM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: [CAUT] Anechoic chamber - experiments

 

All,

 

The last 3 days we've had a C7 in BYU's anechoic chamber doing some studies
on how sound comes out of a piano (direction, mapping everything, etc.) and
some very interesting things are coming of it. (More later) But the exciting
thing is that the head physicist is a decent pianist and after moving the C7
into the chamber Keith tuned it and voiced a few notes. The fellow said
"Wow! what you just did made some big differences in the spectrum of that
note. Do you think we could do some studies on piano voicing, and maybe
other things related to pianos???"

 

Now I'm jumping up and down..

 

So, Yamaha is sending us a C7 Disklavier so that repeatability is not an
issue, and we will have a film crew documenting it all. This is now a go,
and not speculative, as some of our other potential studies have been. It is
slated for Fall semester.

 

If any of you have ideas of things you might like to see studied, please let
me or Keith know. We will have the piano in the chamber for one week. I
haven't started to compile my list yet, but it might be fairly extensive and
include what happens with needle placement, different kinds of "alternative"
voicing methods, different hammer spectrums, etc. Then, we'll sit down with
the scientists,  narrow things down, choose, and watch them do their thing.
It's a very exciting time!

 

These folks are also very grateful for our help, and the microscope studies
are also a go. Apparently that's no big deal, but this anechoic chamber
stuff is. They are creating "acoustic maps" of many instruments in a way
that has never been done. 3D stuff or some new thing. I'll find out more as
I go.

 

Jim Busby BYU

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