Sounds Like Music
How is sound different than music?Copyright School of Music, Indiana University
Students gain a good knowledge base as to how sound and music are related, and what distinguishes them from each other. They come to understand that sound is a form of energy that travels through a medium. Through demonstrations and experiences with glass bottles, tuning forks and stringed instruments, students realize that music can be loosely defined as organized sound. This prepares students for the associated activity, in which they use rubber bands and boxes to make basic stringed instruments that produce sounds, and then further coordinate their sounds into a class musical composition.
Engineers must understand the relationship between pitch and the natural frequency of various materials to design instruments that produce beautiful music, as well as design concert halls, quiet libraries, and sound recording and music playing equipment.
After this lesson, students should be able to:
- Explain that sound is a form of energy.
- Explain the relationships between pitch, frequency and wavelength (as frequency increases, pitch increases, and as wavelength increases, pitch decreases).
- List different media through which sound waves can travel.
- Explain that music is the organization of sound.