Charles Taylor's 1989 Christmas Lectures 2/5: Essence of Instrument

In his 2nd lecture, Charles Taylor investigates essential features that have to be present in any instrument, if usable musical sound is to be produced. Origin of musical instruments remains mystery. It has been suggested that strings developed from twang of bowstring and wind instruments from pan pipes made from hollow reeds. We shall be more concerned with features that need to be present to produce useable musical sound. Characteristic of simple musical note is regularity of pressure changes and frequency within range of human ears. Most instruments depend on 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 notes. Pulling cork from bottle makes musical sound, but is very short-lived, how can we make this continuous note? Plucking guitar string makes clearly different sound to bowing violin, even though primary source is stretched string. We shall ask how bowing can feed energy to keep sound going, look at methods of amplifying sound and complications of this amplification. We shall explore all these effects and their consequences for design of instruments, for player and for listener. We shall also begin to look at their consequences for music produced by synthesizers or computers, topic to which we shall return in Lecture V. Timecodes: 00:00 - Origin of Musical Instruments 01:16 - Mechanical Model of...