The essence of an instrument – Charles Taylor’s 1989 Christmas Lectures 2/5
In his second lecture, Charles Taylor investigates the essential features that have to be present in any instrument, if a usable musical sound is to be produced.Watch all the lectures in this series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbnrZHfNEDZywm9-OxvqPpP8RnE4dQnXY
Watch our newest Christmas lectures here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbnrZHfNEDZyQJZLPMjwEoOLdkFBLU2m1
This was recorded on 2 Dec 1989.
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This year marks 200 years of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures — a world famous series showcasing science, curiosity, and mind-blowing demos, and started by the legendary Michael Faraday himself. To celebrate, we're unlocking the archive. Every Saturday, we’ll upload a classic lecture to our YouTube channel — some not seen since they aired on TV. Sign up as a Science Supporter and get early access here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYeF244yNGuFefuFKqxIAXw/join
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From the 1989 programme notes:
The origin of musical instruments remains a mystery. It has been suggested that strings developed from the twang of a bowstring and wind instruments from the pan pipes made from hollow reeds. We shall be more concerned with the features that need to be present to produce a useable musical sound.
Characteristic of a simple musical note is the regularity of pressure changes and a frequency within the range of human ears. Most instruments depend on the vibration of air in pipes, of tightly stretched strings, of nearly flat plates, or of hollow shapes like bells. We shall start by thinking about how things vibrate, how vibrations start, and what effect this has on the notes. Pulling a cork from a bottle makes a musical sound, but is very short-lived; how can we make this a continuous note?
Plucking a guitar string makes a clearly different sound to bowing a violin, even though the primary source is a stretched string. We shall ask how bowing can feed energy to keep the sound going, look at methods of amplifying the sound, and the complications of this amplification.
We shall explore all these effects and their consequences for the design of instruments, for the player, and for the listener. We shall also begin to look at their consequences for music produced by synthesizers or computers, a topic to which we shall return in Lecture V.
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About the 1989 CHRISTMAS LECTURES
Science and music are often treated as separate subjects yet large numbers of scientists are passionate about music. Science is sometimes described as the process of asking questions about the world around us and in this series of lectures, we shall be asking scientific questions about many different aspects of music, starting with the most difficult of all… ‘What is Music?’
It is a fact that every sound is produced by changing the pressure of the air by a small amount. These pressure changes travel as waves to our ears and when they are perceived by the ear-brain system, they become what we call sound and music. We shall explore the basic science involved in this journey including how musical instruments make pressure changes and the factors that affect sound quality, both from the craftsmanship of the instrument to the skill of the performer.
The ear-brain system has a profound effect on our perception of music and these lectures will consider this alongside how the technology of instruments in different cultures have influenced the development of music.
These lectures will include demonstrations from over 100 years ago, using much of the original apparatus which has survived at the Royal Institution. While many of the demonstrations in this lecture series may appear to be quite objective, it is necessary to remind ourselves that we are dealing with very subjective phenomena. The experience we call music can on be understood properly if we bring the measurements and observations out of the lab and apply them in the real world of performance and listening.
Find out more about the CHRISTMAS LECTURES here: https://www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures
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