Singing in the Rain: Why the Bundengan Sounds Better Wet #Acoustics23

Traditional Indonesian instrument made with bamboo and used by duck herders performs best in the rain.

SYDNEY, Dec. 6, 2023 – A bundengan wears many hats – and is one too. This portable shelter woven from bamboo has protected Indonesian duck herders from the sun and rain for centuries. Able to comfortably balance on the wearer’s head, a bundengan is equipped with a visor that curves around the side to meet at a long back. A more surprising, but no less practical, feature is the collection of strings and bamboo bars added in to produce music. Duck herders fill the hours spent tending to ducks sitting underneath their outfitted shelter, playing their shield as an instrument.

Over the years, bundengan musicians learned that their bamboo music-maker sounds better when played in the rain. Gea Oswah Fatah Parikesit and their team at Universitas Gadjah Mada investigated the physics behind this phenomenon and are presenting their work on the water-dependent acoustic properties of the bundengan Dec. 6 at 10:40 a.m. Australian Eastern Daylight Time, as part of Acoustics 2023, running Dec. 4-8 at the International Convention Centre Sydney.

The bundengan is constructed by weaving bamboo splits, which are covered by overlapping bamboo culm sheaths with ropes to secure everything in place.

“Our team discovered that the key to the sound quality is in the bamboo culm sheaths,” said Parikesit. “To understand the physics of the sheaths, we first had to understand its biological context. When the sheaths were still attached at the bamboo stem, they gradually change shape: First, they are curled because they need to protect the younger parts of the stem, but afterward, they have a more planar shape because they no longer need to protect the older part of the stem.”

When wet, the culm sheaths seek to return to their curled form, but tied down in their planar formation, they instead press into each other. The resulting tension allows the sheaths to vibrate together.

Parikesit will continue investigating the physics of the bamboo culm to develop new musical instruments that, like the bundengan, perform best when wet.

“As an Indonesian, I have extra motivation because the bundengan is a piece of our cultural heritage,” said Parikesit. “I am trying my best to support the conservation and documentation of the bundengan and other Indonesian endangered instruments.”

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Contact:
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

Image of a bundengan, a portable shelter woven from bamboo, which is worn by Indonesian duck herders who often outfit it to double as a musical instrument. Credit: Gea Oswah Fatah Parikesit

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–

The Acoustical Society of America is joining the Australian Acoustical Society to co-host Acoustics 2023 Sydney. This collaborative event will incorporate the Western Pacific Acoustics Conference and the Pacific Rim Underwater Acoustics Conference.

Main meeting website: https://acoustics23sydney.org/
Technical program: https://eppro01.ativ.me/src/EventPilot/php/express/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL23

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are summaries (300-500 words) of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at
https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting or virtual press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

ABOUT THE AUSTRALIAN ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY
The Australian Acoustical Society (AAS) is the peak technical society for individuals working in acoustics in Australia. The AAS aims to promote and advance the science and practice of acoustics in all its branches to the wider community and provide support to acousticians. Its diverse membership is made up from academia, consultancies, industry, equipment manufacturers and retailers, and all levels of Government. The Society supports research and provides regular forums for those who practice or study acoustics across a wide range of fields The principal activities of the Society are technical meetings held by each State Division, annual conferences which are held by the State Divisions and the ASNZ in rotation, and publication of the journal Acoustics Australia. https://www.acoustics.org.au/

Picking Up Good Vibrations: The Surprising Physics of the Didjeridu #Acoustics23

Playing Australia’s most iconic instrument requires producing vibrations inside the vocal tract.

SYDNEY, Dec. 6, 2023 – Australia’s most iconic sound is almost certainly the didjeridu. The long wooden tube-shaped instrument is famous for its unique droning music and has played a significant role in Australian Aboriginal culture for thousands of years. Despite the instrument’s simple design, the playing technique can be highly complex.

Joe Wolfe and John Smith from the University of New South Wales conducted acoustic experiments to study the didjeridu’s unusual and complicated performance techniques. Smith will be presenting their work on Dec. 6 at 8:20 a.m. Australian Eastern Daylight Time, as part of Acoustics 2023 Sydney, running Dec. 4-8 at the International Convention Centre Sydney.

Producing complex sounds with the didjeridu requires creating and manipulating resonances inside the vocal tract. Credit: Kate Callas

“We were interested in the effect of the player’s vocal tract on various wind instruments,” said Smith. “The didjeridu seemed like an obvious start because the effect is so striking.”

Much more than with almost any other instrument, a didjeridu player uses his vocal tract and vocal folds to produce striking changes in timbre.

“Resonances in the mouth tend to remove bands of frequencies in the didjeridu sound and we notice the remaining bands,” said Smith. “It’s a bit like a sculptor removing marble to leave the things that we notice.”

To study didjeridu performance, the team developed new experimental techniques. One involved injecting a broadband acoustic signal into a player’s mouth to measure the acoustic impedance spectrum of a didjeridu player’s vocal tract. The impedance spectrum is an indicator of which frequencies will resonate and which will be suppressed.

This information let Smith and his colleagues identify traits that make the best didjeridus, explore advanced techniques musicians use to create more complicated sounds, and expand their studies to other wind instruments.

In another study, the team were able to identify and understand the acoustic properties of didjeridus most preferred by expert players; these can be very different from the properties of other wind instruments.

“We looked at advanced performance techniques, not only in the didjeridu, but also in other wind instruments, such as clarinet and saxophone,” said Smith. “We continue to research subtle features of expressive playing of wind instruments.”

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Contact:
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–

The Acoustical Society of America is joining the Australian Acoustical Society to co-host Acoustics 2023 Sydney. This collaborative event will incorporate the Western Pacific Acoustics Conference and the Pacific Rim Underwater Acoustics Conference.

Main meeting website: https://acoustics23sydney.org/
Technical program: https://eppro01.ativ.me/src/EventPilot/php/express/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL23

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are summaries (300-500 words) of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at
https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting or virtual press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

ABOUT THE AUSTRALIAN ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY
The Australian Acoustical Society (AAS) is the peak technical society for individuals working in acoustics in Australia. The AAS aims to promote and advance the science and practice of acoustics in all its branches to the wider community and provide support to acousticians. Its diverse membership is made up from academia, consultancies, industry, equipment manufacturers and retailers, and all levels of Government. The Society supports research and provides regular forums for those who practice or study acoustics across a wide range of fields The principal activities of the Society are technical meetings held by each State Division, annual conferences which are held by the State Divisions and the ASNZ in rotation, and publication of the journal Acoustics Australia. https://www.acoustics.org.au/

1aMU6 – Psychoacoustic phenomena in electric-guitar performance

Jonas Braasch
School of Architecture, Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst.
Troy, NY 12180
braasj@rpi.edu

Joshua L. Braasch
Trans-genre Studio
Latham, NY

Torben Pastore
College of Health Solutions
Arizona State Univ
Tempe, AZ

Popular version of paper 1aMU6 Psychoacoustic phenomena in electric-guitar performance
Presented Tuesday morning, June 8, 2021
180th ASA Meeting, Acoustics in Focus

This presentation examines how electric guitar effects helped pave the road to modern rock and roll music. Distortion effects provide sustain for the guitar similar to other core-ensemble instruments like the violin and piano in classical music. Distortion can also make the sound brighter to heighten the often aggressive sound of rock music. Other effects, like the chorus, phaser, and flanger, can help make the guitar sound much wider, something we are also used to listening to with classical orchestras. To some extent, electrical guitar effects substituted for and expanded upon the room reverberation that typically accompanies classical music, and they were instrumental in producing stereo Rock ‘n’ Roll records that provide spatial width, something old mono records do not provide. While often having favorable sound-color characteristics, the sound of mono recordings sits static in between both ears when listening through headphones or earbuds. This phenomenon, which is called inside-the-head locatedness, is not apparent when listening through a loudspeaker. Without electric sound effects, the electric guitar would not have become the distinctive instrument that Jimi Hendrix, Link Wray, Chuck Berry, and others defined.

Figure 1: Schematic depicting the stereo image (left/right balance) for examplary stereo recordings. Left: In Jazz albums like Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, placing instruments to the left, center, or right worked well because of the transparent sound ideal of the genre; Center: Early rock/pop songs like the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” used the same approach with less success; Right: Electronic effects later made it possible to widene the instrument sounds like it is the case for Nirvana’s “Smells like teen spirit” — reflecting the genre’s sound ideal to perceptually fuse sounds together.

A brief survey was conducted to investigate the extent to which electrical sound effects provide a desirable guitar sound beyond the sustain and spatial qualities these effects can provide. The outcome for a group of 21 participants (guitarist and non-guitarists) suggests that listeners have their distinct preferences when listening to a blues solo. It appears that they prefer some but not all distortion effects over a clean, non-distorted sound.

Figure 2: Guitar effects used in the listening survey

Figure 3: Results of the listening survey. The average preference over 21 listener is shown as a function of 10 different guitar distortion effects that were used in the survey. Three percpetually distinct groups were found. Two effects rated significantly higher than the other eight, and one effect was rated significantly lower than all other ones. The clean (no effect) condition was in the center group, so dependent on the type of distortion, the effect can make the guitar sound better or worth.

Speaker Update: International Year of Sound Event to Explore Acoustics of Steelpan Music

David Bradley unavailable; Andrew Morrison to present on making meaning from acoustical data

For More Information:
Keeta Jones
516-576-2364
kjones@acousticalsociety.org

MELVILLE, N.Y., August 5, 2020 – The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) continues to host virtual events in August as part of the International Year of Sound.

On Aug. 6, David Carreon Bradley was scheduled to present at a virtual talk, but he is unable to do so. Instead, Andrew Morrison will discuss how the acoustical physics of the steelpan helps machine learning algorithms process large datasets.

All events are open to the public, and admission is free. ASA encourages media, scientists, audio enthusiasts, students, educators and families to tune in.

Making meaning from data — from the acoustics lab to machine learning: Thursday, Aug. 6

Morrison, a professor of physics and astronomy at Joliet Junior College, was intrigued by the characteristic sound of a Caribbean steelpan drum, which is easy to recognize by ear and yet still does not have a full scientific explanation for the how this musical instrument produces the distinctive tone.

His virtual talk, “Making meaning from data — from the acoustics lab to machine learning,” starts at 1 p.m. Eastern U.S. on Aug. 6.

He will discuss what is known about the physics of the steelpan, how scientists have engaged with the public to help classify the data, and how machine learning algorithms are being used to help process large datasets. He will also discuss how this study is useful for illustrating some parts of the scientific process.

A question-and-answer period will follow.

Morrison’s research interests include using optical methods and machine learning analysis techniques to study the vibrations of musical instruments. He is a past chair of the ASA Technical Committee on Musical Acoustics, is actively involved in the ASA Committee on Education in Acoustics and has a passion for working with undergraduates in his laboratory.

Don’t forget to register for this free event at https://aipp.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0pd-CgqjItH9wj-nGQnxV0hEJxbtYWiR1t.

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ABOUT ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA

The Acoustical Society of America is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year.

1pMU4: Reproducing tonguing strategies in single-reed woodwinds using an artificial blowing machine

Montserrat Pàmies-Vilà – pamies-vila@mdw.ac.at
Alex Hofmann – hofmann-alex@ mdw.ac.at
Vasileios Chatziioannou – chatziioannou@mdw.ac.at
University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna
Anton-von-Webern-Platz 1
1030 Vienna, Austria

Popular version of paper 1pMU4: Reproducing tonguing strategies in single-reed woodwinds using an artificial blowing machine
Presented Monday morning, May 13, 2019
177th ASA Meeting, Louisville, KY

Clarinet and saxophone players create sounds by blowing into the instrument through a mouthpiece with an attached reed, and they control the sound production by adjusting the air pressure in their mouth and the force that the lips apply to the reed. The role of the player’s tongue is to achieve different articulation styles, for example legato (or slurred), portato and staccato. The tongue touches the reed in order to stop its vibration and regulates the separation between notes. In legato the notes are played without separation, in portato the tongue shortly touches the reed and in staccato there is a longer silence between notes. A group of 11 clarinet players from the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (Vienna, Austria) tested these tonguing techniques with an equipped clarinet. Figure 1 shows an example of the recorded signals. The analysis revealed that the portato technique is performed similarly among players, whereas staccato requires tonguing and blowing coordination and it is more player-dependent.

Figure 1: Articulation techniques in the clarinet, played by a professional player. Blowing pressure (blue), mouthpiece sound pressure (green) and reed displacement (orange) in legato, portato and staccato articulation. Bottom right: pressure sensors placed on the clarinet mouthpiece and strain gauge on a reed.

The interest of the current study is to mimic these tonguing techniques using an artificial setup, where the vibration of the reed and the motion of the tongue can be observed. The artificial setup consists of a transparent box (artificial mouth), allowing to track the reed motion, the position of the lip and the artificial tongue. This artificial blowing-and-tonguing machine is shown in Figure 2. The build-in tonguing system is controlled with a shaker, in order to assure repeatability. The tonguing system enters the artificial mouth through a circular joint, which allows testing several tongue movements. The parameters obtained from the measurements with players are used to set up the air pressure in the artificial mouth and the behavior of the tonguing system.

Figure 2: The clarinet mouthpiece is placed through an airtight hole into a Plexiglas box. This blowing machine allows monitoring the air pressure in the box, the artificial lip and the motion of the artificial tongue, while recording the mouth and mouthpiece pressure and the reed displacement.

The signals recorded with the artificial setup were compared to the measurements obtained with clarinet players. We provide some sound examples comparing one player (first) with the blowing machine (second). A statistical analysis showed that the machine is capable of reproducing the portato articulation, achieving similar attack and release transients (the sound profile at the beginning and at the end of every note). However, in staccato articulation the blowing machine produces too fast release transients.

Comparison between a real player and the blowing machine.

This artificial blowing and tonguing set-up gives the possibility to record the essential physical variables taking part in the sound production and helps into the better understanding of the processes taking place inside the clarinetist’s mouth during playing.