Music

Another uniquely human form of sonic communication is music. Some animals besides humans produce sounds that seem musical, such as birds singing or crickets chirping. These “musical” sounds are produced to communicate specific environmental information to other animals, such as to attract a mate or to warn of a predator. For example, in spring the male cuckoo produces his characteristic mating call.

However, only humans produce sounds that communicate not so much information about the surroundings but more about mental states or emotions. The English composer Frederick Delius evokes the call of the cuckoo in his composition “On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring.”

Delius uses the bird’s call not for the reason the bird does, but instead to elicit an emotion, the feeling he has when he hears the bird in spring.

The creation of music is a feature common to all human cultures, as is speech. Although the variety of musical sounds and their combinations varies tremendously among cultures, there are some features common to all music. Yet, how music affects humans and why we are susceptible to its charms are questions whose answers are only beginning to be understood.

We are going to examine the properties of sound and the sense of hearing in order to understand how sounds communicate information to us about the world around us. Much of the examination will be carried out through experiments or demonstrations that you can perform to experience sonic phenomena first-hand. These experiments involve the production of sound, its transmission, and the perception of sound. The demonstrations reveal correlations between the physical properties of sounds and the perceived characteristics.