2025-08-27

Last modified: 2025-08-27 20:50:22

Fundamentals of musical acoustics

I've just finished chatper 2 on "Impulsive Sounds, Alone and in Sequence", and I want to make a web page providing the "experimental apparatus" described therein.

We want:

1. a way to trigger a single pulse of "type 1"
2. a way to trigger a single pulse of "type 2"
3. a way to trigger a pulse of each type, the second one delayed by a variable amount
4. a way to trigger repeating pulses of each type, the second one delayed by a variable amount, and at a variable tick rate

The 2 types of pulse need to be distinct, for example (suggested in the book) one is hitting a piece of wood and one is hitting a piece of metal.

And we want to see:

• that when the pulses are different sounds, we perceive the rate to be constant no matter the offset
• that when the pulses are identical sounds, we still perceive the rate to be constant until the offset is almost exactly 50% of the period
• that when the tick rate is high enough, we stop hearing individual pulses and hear a sort of buzz, and then even higher we hear a tone
• we want to provide numerical output so that you can use the tool to write down exactly what frequency you think the transition is from pulses to buzz to tone, and what range around "50% of the period" the 2nd tone can be delayed by and still feel like double the tick rate

https://incoherency.co.uk/musical-acoustics/

Made by Cursor. Not amazing but a good start.