Date of Submission
Spring 2019
Academic Programs and Concentrations
Physics
Project Advisor 1
Matthew Deady
Abstract/Artist's Statement
Why do people always prefer the practice room in the corner on the second floor than the others? What’s the reason why string players often go for the “dryer” room than the wind players? Wondering why brass players often occupy the resonant room? This paper is here to decipher all the mysteries behind all of the questions above by the acoustic analysis suggested by Bonnelo and the other supplying papers on sound absorbing materials. The question to be answered is how the rooms are different from each other in terms of their dimensions and damping surfaces. Eventually, construct a criteria for adjusting the acoustic characteristic by using sound absorbing materials. Through a survey filled out by conservatory students, it informs general preferences of choosing practice room and a frequency dependent reverberation time test is run accordingly. Having gathered all the information, it can be concluded that there is a direct relation between how preferable a room is and room dimension and the evenness of reverberation time throughout a frequency interval. Besides from the method of damping excessive resonance through locating high and low pressure area of the standing wave suggested by the Bonello paper, there are also possibilities of using different absorbing materials and Helmholtz resonator to change the reverberation time and modal density of the targeting frequency of a room. Therefore, with the results of this paper, musicians are a step closer to a simple yet career changing acoustic tool for constructing practice rooms.
Open Access Agreement
Open Access
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Chou, Yu-Tien, "Practice Room Acoustics: What Matters to Musicians About the Practice Space" (2019). Senior Projects Spring 2019. 218.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2019/218
This work is protected by a Creative Commons license. Any use not permitted under that license is prohibited.