Berklee acousticians make waves.

By Andy Barrett '06
Berklee.edu Correspondent
August 10, 2006

	Tony Hoover takes a break from testing acoustics in a Berklee studio.
	Photo by Phil Farnsworth

Whether they know it or not, when students make the decision to pursue a career in music at Berklee, they are dedicating their lives to the principles and properties of a science called acoustics. For even the most proficient musicians however, the exact meaning of the word can be something of a mystery. This is a circumstance which assistant professor and acoustical consultant Tony Hoover is all too familiar with.

"There's this misconception that since acoustics is a science, that means lots of math," says Hoover, who teaches Applications of Music Acoustics. "Sure, in grad school acoustics there is going to be some pretty heavy-duty math and physics, but that's not what we're trying to do here at Berklee. We're extrapolating from that stuff to get the essence of what we need."

For the average Berklee student, that means an understanding of things like microphone placement, sound system and recording studio design and sound for live performance. After all, learning how to optimize the sound quality of your performance will only increase the chances of your audience fully appreciating your music.

"I can't think of anybody leaving Berklee that wouldn't benefit greatly from understanding something about sound," Hoover says. "There's so much to be had by understanding what a decibel is and how sound propagates in a room, because it helps with music by design, rather than music by accident."

Required of music technology students and electable by all, Applications of Music Acoustics begins with fundamental topics such as frequency and decibels. While at first these concepts might seem intimidating, they are critical to understanding human hearing and are referenced so often during the semester that students come to thoroughly understand their meaning. The course covers applications like sound propagation from different instruments, loudspeaker testing, and anechoic chambers, all of which rely on those foundational ideas.

Many students of the acoustics class taught by Hoover find their way to Bose headquarters in nearby Framingham, where they are invited to tour the company's anechoic chamber, a room so well outfitted with sound-absorbing treatments that it ensures an echo-free space.

"It's a very unusual environment, because even if you're outdoors, the ground still reflects sound. It literally surprises everyone because the only sound you hear is the sound coming from you," says Hoover. "And if you can hear a musical instrument in there, you'll never hear it the same way again. Like with a saxophone, a lot of the lows and mids are coming out of the bell [the large round opening at the instrument's end opposite the mouth piece], but a lot of the sound is coming out of the open tone holes and radiating off of the cylinder that is the saxophone itself. After you hear and understand something like this, it can really change where you would want to mic the instrument."

Experiments and Awards

Over the years, these sorts of acoustical phenomena have interested Berklee students to the point where they were compelled to conduct their own investigations. Music production and engineering major Pam Harght, who was chair of the Acoustical Society at Berklee, has already conducted several such experiments on the varying sound levels of different instruments in music practice rooms, and also on the sonic directivity—how sound radiates from a source—of her own instrument, the flute. With the help and encouragement of Hoover, Harght, fellow Berklee student Sam Ortallono, and Berklee alumnus Andy Carballeira recorded and measured the sound pressure levels of as many instruments as they could within the Berklee practice rooms. After compiling a report of their findings, Harght, Ortallono, and Carballeira were invited to present the information at the national Acoustical Society of America (ASA) meeting held in San Diego in 2004.

"The information that we collected is really helpful for an architectural acoustician because no one really knew the potential of how loud different musical instruments could get," Harght says. "So now when they need to design any kind of room that would be used for musical purposes, they now have a reference to start from."

Much to their surprise, Harght and her fellow research partners were awarded the prestigious Newman Prize by the ASA for their groundbreaking research.

"The ASA bestows maybe five Newman Awards a year," says Hoover, "so for undergraduate students at a music school—not an architectural or engineering graduate school—to have won the award is quite a big deal."

Unfortunately, not everyone has access to the proper equipment and environments to conduct their own acoustical experiments, but for those still interested in furthering their knowledge of acoustics and its principles, Hoover recommends starting on the websites of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and the National Council of Acoustical Consultants. Students browsing the ASA site, says Hoover, will find books about the origin of acoustics and about Wallace Clement Sabine, the man who pioneered the practice of architectural acoustics in the late 1890s.

"He created what might be considered the finest hall in the western hemisphere and the first hall to be designed using engineering acoustics principles," says Hoover of Sabine and Boston Symphony Hall, which is located a few blocks from Berklee.

Since Symphony Hall opened in 1900, the study and knowledge of acoustics has advanced immeasurably. Uses for the science have been found in unexpected places, such as the testing of automobile aerodynamics and even space exploration.

"Have you ever tried to poke through an ice cube with a match?" asks Hoover. "It doesn't work very well. If NASA wants to find out what's happening on Europa, the ice-covered moon of Jupiter, it would probably be better to send an acoustic probe rather than try to melt through a couple thousand feet of ice, because sound travels through [ice] beautifully," Hoover says. "The uses for this stuff keep going and going and going, even outside of music."

And thanks to the study of acoustics at Berklee, its uses will keep going and going, inside of music.

Andy Barrett graduated in 2006 with a degree in music synthesis.