Books & Articles

A select bibliography. I've highlighted my dozen "personal picks" by including a scanned graphic of the cover.

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ACOUSTICS AND PSYCHOACOUSTICS

Ando, Y. (1998). Architectural Acoustics: Blending Sound Sources, Sound Fields and Listeners. New York: Springer-Verlag. Attempting to fuse art and science, Ando combines subjective and objective factors involved in concert hall design with special attention to a model of the auditory-brain system.

Backus, J. (1969). The Acoustical Foundations of Music. New York: Norton.

Bech, S. (1998). Spatial Aspects of Reproduced Sound in Small Rooms. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 103 (1), 434-445. Part of a suite [see following] of important reports on the audibility of individual sound reflections off nearby walls in domestic-sized rooms.

Bech, S. (1995). Timbral Aspects of Reproduced Sound in Small Rooms, I. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 97 (3), 1717-1726.

Bech, S. (1996). Timbral Aspects of Reproduced Sound in Small Rooms, II. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 99 (6), 3539-3549.

Begault, D.R. (1994). 3-D Sound for Virtual Reality and Multimedia. New York: Academic. Useful, well-presented introduction to psychoacoustics, head-related transfer functions, virtual acoustic reality, etc.

Benade, A. H. (1976). Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics. London: Oxford Univ. Press.

Beranek, L. (1986). Acoustics. Woodbury, NY: Acoustical Society of America. An updated version of the 1954 classic textbook.

Beranek, L. (1996). Concert and Opera Halls: How they Sound. Woodbury NY: Acoustical Society of America. An approachable, well illustrated introduction by an eminent authority.

Blauert, J. (1997). Spatial Hearing: The Psychophysics of Human Sound Localization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. The author provides a thorough overview of the psychophysical research on spatial hearing in Europe and the United States prior. A newly updated version of the classic 1983 text on sound localization.

Boff, K. R., L. Kaufman, and J. P. Thomas (1986). Handbook of Perception and Human Performance. Sensory Processes and Perception, Vol. 1. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Various sound parameters are delineated and discussed, including their interpretation by individuals having auditory pathologies. An excellent first source for the definition of sound parameters and inquiry into the complexities of sonic phenomena.

Boff, K. R., and J. E. Lincoln, eds. (1988). Engineering Data Compendium: Human Perception and Performance. Ohio: Armstrong Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. This three-volume compendium distills information from the research literature about human perception and performance that is of potential value to systems designers. Plans include putting the compendium on CD. A separate user's guide is also available.

Bryan, Micheal, & Tempest, William. (1972). Does Infrasound Make Drivers 'Drunk'?. New Scientist, Mar, 584-586.

Case, J. (1966). Sensory Mechanisms. New York: Academic Press.

Cherry, E. C. Some Experiments on the Recognition of Speech with One and with Two Ears. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 25 (1953): 975-979. A classic paper on the cocktail-party effect, demonstrating the role of attention in the ability to track one voice from a crowd.

Clynes, M., ed. (1982). Music, Mind, and Brain: The Neuropsychology of Music. New York: Plenum. A collection of papers based on the conference on Physical and Neuropsychological Foundation of Music which was in Ossiach (wherever that is!) in 1980. It covers topics such as the nature of the language of music, how the brain organizes musical experience, perception of sound and rhythm, and how computers can help contribute to a better understanding of musical processes.

Craik, R., & Naylor, G. (1985). Measurement of Reverberation Time via Probability Functions. Journal of Sound and Vibration, 102 (3), 453-454.

Cremer, L., and Muller, H. A. (1982). Principles and Applications of Room Acoustics. London: Applied Science. This two-volume set is a basic technical reference in the field, covering both the physics and psychoacoustics of sound in rooms.

Crowder, R., & Morton, J. (1969). Precategorical Acoustic Storage. Perception and Psychophysics, 5 (6), 365-373.

Davies, J. B. (1978). The Psychology of Music. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. A clear account, covering all of the fundamental areas: physics of sound, early psychophysical studies, melody perception, musical aptitude, as well as the basic musical parameters (pitch, loudness, timbre, duration) and their physical correlates. Particularly interesting are Davies' human perspectives, e.g., "music exists in the ear of the listener, and nowhere else," and his final chapter on specific musical instrument families and character traits of the individuals who play them.

Deutsch, D., ed. (1982). The Psychology of Music. New York: Academic. A well-known and well-regarded book, covers perception, analysis of timbre, rhythm and tempo, timing, melodic processes, and others.

Deutsch, D. The Tritone Paradox: An Influence of Language on Music Perception. Music Perception, 8 (1991): 335-347. The author presents evidence that individuals not only perceive the same musical intervals between complex tones differently but also that the perception of each individual is related to his or her own customary speech patterns.

Dixon, N. F. (1971). Subliminal Perception. London: McGraw- Hill.

Dowling, W.J., and D. L. Harwood (1986). Music Cognition. San Diego: Academic Press. A general text providing an abundance of information concerning the physical characteristics of musical sound and the processes involved in its perception. Topics covered include basic acoustics, physiology of hearing, music perception (e.g., timbre, consonance/dissonance, etc.), melodic organization, temporal organization, emotion and meaning, and cultural context of musical experience; abundant references to research in each of these areas are provided for further reading.

Egan, M.D. (1988). Architectural Acoustics. New York: McGraw-Hill. One of the more practical, non-intimidating and popular introductory books on the general subject of noise, isolation and room acoustics.

Ford, R.D. (1970). Introduction to Acoustics. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Forsyth, M. (1989). Buildings for Music: The Architect, the Musician, and the Listener from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Coffee-table-worthy historical perspective on the leading concert venues of the last 400 years.

Gazzaniga, M.S. (1972). One Brain -- Two Minds? American Scientist, 60 (3), 311-317.

Gelfand, S. (1998). Hearing, An Introduction to Psychological and Physiological Acoustics. New York: M. Dekker.

Halpern, D., Blake, R., & Hillenbrand, B. (1986). Psychoacoustics of a Chilling Sound. Perception and Psychophysics, 39 (2), 77-80.

Helmholtz, H. von Selected Writings of Hermann von Helmholtz, edited by Russell Kahl (1971). Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Landmark writings of the work of the nineteenth-century scientist into the realm of audiology and sonic phenomena.

Jerger, J. (1963). Modern Developments in Audiology. New York: Academic Press.

Knudsen, V. & Harris, C. (1978): Acoustical Designing in Architecture. Woodbury, NY: Acoustical Society of America. The reprint of the classic 1950 text.

Lewers, T.H., & Anderson, J.S. (1984). Some Acoustical Properties of St Paul's Cathedral, London. Journal of Sound and Vibration, 92 (2), 285-297.

Lebo, C., & Oliphant, K. (1969). Music as a Source of Acoustic Trauma. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 17 (5), 535 - 538.

Moore, B. C. J. (1982). An Introduction to the Psychology of Hearing, 2nd ed. London: Academic.

Olson, H. F. (1967). Music, Physics, and Engineering. New York: Dover.

Oster, Gerald. (1973). Auditory Beats in the Brain. Scientific American, October, 94-102.

Pierce, J. R., & David, E. E. (1958). Man's World of Sound. New York: Doubleday.

Pierce, J. R. (1983). The Science of Musical Sound. New York: Scientific American Books. Marvelously approachable and beautifully illustrated, a great place to begin an investigation into the physical and psychoacoustical issues of sound.

Plomp, R. (1964). The Ear as a Frequency Analyzer. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 36 (9), 1628-1636.

Plomp, R. (1965). Tonal Consonance and Critical Bandwidth. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 37, 548-560.

Rigden, J. S. (1985). Physics and the Sound of Music. New York: John Wiley.

Roederer, J. G. (1975). Introduction to the Physics and Psychophysics of Music, 2nd ed. New York: Springer. A good introduction to the subject.

Shankland, Robert S. (1973) Acoustics of Greek theatres. Physics Today, Oct, 30-35.

Shepard, R. (1964). Circularity in Judgments of Relative Pitch. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 36 (12), 2346-2353. So-called Shepard tones are the aural equivalent of the barber pole-always appearing to move upwards without end.

Slarve, Richard N., & Johnson, Daniel L. (1975) Human Whole-Body Exposure to Infrasound. Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine, 46 (4), 428-431.

Stevens, S. S.,& Halowell, D. (1938). Hearing. New York: Wiley.

Stevens, S. S., & Warshofsky, F. (1965). Sound and Hearing. New York: Time-Life.

Taylor, C. A. (1965). The Physics of Musical Sounds. New York: American Elsevier.

Tobias, J. V., ed. (1972). Foundations of Modern Auditory Theory. New York: Academic.

Von Bekesy, G. (1957). Sensations on the Skin Similar to Directional Hearing, Beats and Harmonics of the Ear. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 29 (4), 489-501.

Von Bekesy, Georg. (1957). The Ear. Scientific American, 197 (2), 66-78.

Wallach, H., E. B. Newman, and M. R. Rosenzweig. The Precedence Effect in Sound Localization. American Journal of Psychology, 57 (1949): 315-336. In a reverberant room, two similar sounds reach a subject's ears from different directions, with one sound following the other after a short delay; yet the subject fuses them into a single sound and localizes this sound based on the source of the first sound to reach the ears. The authors study this perceptual phenomenon, which they term the "precedence effect," and which is also referred to as the "Haas effect" or the "law of the first wavefront."

Zwicker, E. (1957). Critical Bandwidth in Loudness Summation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 29 (5), 548- 557.

LISTENING & SOUND COGNITION

Bregman, A. S. (1990). Auditory Scene Analysis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bregman provides a comprehensive theoretical discussion of the principal factors involved in the perceptual organization of auditory stimuli, especially Gestalt principles of organization in auditory stream segregation.

Clynes, M., ed. (1982). Music, mind, and brain: The Neuropsychology of Music. New York: Plenum.

Cohen, J. (1962). Information Theory and Music. Behavioral Science, 7, 137-163.

Deutsch, D. (1969). Music Recognition. Psychological Review, 76 (3), 300-307.

Deutsch, D., ed. (1982). The Psychology of Music. New York: Academic.

Dixon, N. F. (1971). Subliminal Perception. London: McGraw- Hill.

Handel S. (1989). Listening. MIT Press. This book includes in one source broad and detailed coverage of auditory topics including sound production (especially by musical instruments and by voice), propagation, modelling, and the physiology of the auditory system. It covers parallels between speech and music throughout.

Langer, S. K. (1951). Philosophy in a New Key. New York: Mentor.

Laske, O. E. (1977). Music, Memory and Thought. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International.

Laske, O. E. (1980). Toward an Explicit Cognitive Theory of Musical Listening. Computer Music Journal, 4 (2), 73-83.

McAdams, S. & E. Bigand, eds. (1993). Thinking in Sound: The Cognitive Psychology of Human Audition, Clarendon Oxford.

McAdams, S. ed. (1987). Music and Psychology: A Mutual Regard, vol. 2 pt. 1, Contemporary Music Review.

McAdams, S., & Bregman, A. (1979). Hearing Musical Streams. Computer Music Journal, 3 (4), 26-43.

McGregor, Graham, White, R.S.(1986). The Art of Listening. London: Croom Helm.

Merriam, A. P. (1964). The Anthropology of Music. Chicago: Northwestern Univ. Press.

Metz, C. (1985). Aural Objects. In E. Weiss & J. Belton, eds. Film Sound, Columbia University Press.

Meyer, L. B. (1956). Emotion and Meaning in Music. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Minsky, M. (1981). Music, Mind and Meaning. Computer Music Journal, 5 (3), 28-44.

Moles, A. (1966). Information Theory and Esthetic Perception. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press.

Moray, N. (1969). Listening and Attention. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

O'Leary, A., and G. Rhodes. Cross-Modal Effects on Visual and Auditory Object Perception. Perception & Psychophysics, 35 (1984): 565-569. Using a display that combined a stimulus for auditory stream segregation with its visually apparent movement analog, these Stanford University researchers demonstrated cross-modal influences between vision and audition on perceptual organization. Subjects hearing the same auditory sequence perceived it as two tones if a concurrent visual sequence was presented that was perceived as two moving dots, and one tone if a concurrent visual sequence perceived as a single object was presented.

Patterson, B. (1974). Musical Dynamics. Scientific American, 231 (5), 78-95.

Peacock, K. Synesthetic Perception: Alexander Scriabin's Color Hearing. Music Perception, 2(4) (1985): 483-506. A curious phenomenon which has surfaced repeatedly since the late Baroque era has come to be known as synaesthesia. It was used by the Romanticists of the nineteenth century as an effective means to enrich their accounts of sensuous impressions. Other names for the phenomena include chromesthesia, photothesia, synopsia, color hearing, and color audition. People who have this characteristic experience a crossover between one or more sensory modes. Thus, they might be blessed with the ability to hear colors or odors, or see sounds. People who habitually perceive stimuli in this manner are often surprised when told that not everyone shares this faculty. Color hearing, though only one form of synaesthesia, is probably the commonest.

Seashore, C. E. (1938). The Psychology of Music. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Yates, A. J. (1963). Delayed auditory feedback. Psychological Bulletin, 60, 213-232.

RELATED TOPICS

Ackerman, D. (1990). A Natural History of the Senses. New York: Vintage.

Computer Music Journal. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. CMJ is the most important source for information on new sound synthesis algorithms, computer music composition techniques, computer-assisted music analysis programs, and a host of other issues.

Dennett, D. C. (1996). Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness. New York: Basic.

Gazzaniga, M.S., ed. (1995). The Cognitive Neurosciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. A fascinating, if daunting 1400-page compendium on the mechanisms involved in human sensory and motor systems, memory, thought, emotions, consciousness and brain evolution.

Levenson, T. (1994). Measure for Measure: A Musical History of Science. New York: Simon & Schuster.

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