Musimathics, Volume 2: The Mathematical Foundations of Music

Gareth Loy

Aug 2011 · MIT Press

About this ebook

The second volume of a commonsense, self-contained introduction to the mathematics and physics of music, focusing on the digital and computational domain; essential reading for musicians, music engineers, and anyone interested in the intersection of art and science.

Volume 2 of Musimathics continues the story of music engineering begun in Volume 1, focusing on the digital and computational domain. Loy goes deeper into the mathematics of music and sound, beginning with digital audio, sampling, and binary numbers, as well as complex numbers and how they simplify representation of musical signals. Chapters cover the Fourier transform, convolution, filtering, resonance, the wave equation, acoustical systems, sound synthesis, the short-time Fourier transform, and the wavelet transform. These subjects provide the theoretical underpinnings of today's music technology. The examples given are all practical problems in music and audio.

Additional material can be found at http://www.musimathics.com.

About the author

Gareth Loy is a musician and award-winning composer. He has published widely and, during a long and successful career at the cutting edge of multimedia computing, has worked as a researcher, lecturer, programmer, software architect, and digital systems engineer. He is President of Gareth, Inc., a provider of software engineering and consulting services internationally.