Projects Page
Here are a few ideas for things you could do as projects, or maybe things you couldn't do as projects. In all cases, it's important that you explain things in a way that uses, and preferably expands, the things we're learning this block.
This assortment is not meant to be exhaustive.
| Challenge: We have that synthesizer in the room, which produces a fundamental and a bunch of harmonics; you can control the intensity and relative phase of each harmonic. Can you get this synthesizer to produce two different vowel sounds? | Obviously you could build a flute, and explain to us how you chose locations and sizes for the holes, and how it can be tuned. |
| There ought to be some opportunities to work with resonating cavities. For example, combining a cavity with a percussion instrument might change the pitch of the percussion instrument. If so, that would be a neat demo. | It would be pretty neat if one of the singers related her training to the sort of analyses we understand now - what allows you to sing really high notes? What is vibrato? and so on. |
| Calculating, and demonstrating, room resonances could be pretty entertaining, especially if you can alter them. | Constructing chimes of the same shapes but different materials, or the same volumes but different shapes, etc., and explaining the resulting sounds would be really cool. |
| You know, you could build a crude phonograph and explain it to us. | |