Bench Degree·MUSICchapter

Before You Start

This book has an experiment on almost every page, and none of them is dangerous. Two need a moment’s care.

Your ears. Several experiments use a tone generator, often through headphones. Start every tone quiet and turn it up only until you can hear it clearly. A pure tone is more harmful than it sounds, because it lacks the harshness that normally makes you turn a loud noise down. If your ears ring after an experiment, it was too loud. Hearing damage does not heal.

A string under tension. A guitar string, or the string of the homemade monochord in Appendix A, stores energy. Never tighten a string far past its normal pitch, and keep your face away from it while you tune it up. A snapping string can cut a finger and will sting an eye.

What you need

Very little. Almost every experiment uses some of these:

• a guitar or ukulele, or the monochord in Appendix A, about $15 to build;
• a phone with a free tuner app, a free tone-generator app (one that can play two or three tones at once is best), a free metronome app and a free spectrum analyzer;
• a free online keyboard, or any real keyboard;
• the free notation program MuseScore, for the chapters on counterpoint;
• recordings of the music named in the text, all of it in the public domain and widely recorded;
• your own voice.

Appendix A lists every experiment in the book, chapter by chapter, with what each one needs.

Listening

Wherever a page describes a sound, a LISTEN box lets you hear it. Every example was synthesized from the numbers in the text, so what you hear is exactly what the page describes and nothing more. In the printed book, point a phone camera at the box’s code; on the website, press play. Start with this one, and set the volume while it plays.

How to read it

The chapters build on each other, and nothing is used before it has been explained. If a chapter feels hard, go back to its experiments and do them; the sound will usually explain what the paragraph could not. Every chapter has the same four kinds of box: ON THE BENCH for experiments, IN PLAIN ENGLISH for a plain restatement, SLOW DOWN. Check Your Understanding for a question with a worked answer, and the figures, which are drawn to be read, not glanced at.

This book will not teach you to play or to sing. It will show you what is happening when you do.

Bench Degree

Get the degree without the diploma.

Learn the material, not how to pass the exam.