Graeme Huon introduced our speaker Neil McLachlan, Associate Professor of the Melbourne University School of Psychological Sciences who was to present to us on Sound and Emotion.
Graeme outlined Neil’s wide range of experience as a researcher in the Departments of Engineering, Architecture, Psychology and Music, as well as working professionally as a performer, instrument designer, and acoustic consultant.
Neil started by introducing the idea
of an “auditory brain”, and understanding sound from a
psychological perspective. He gave us a quick summary of his work on
the Federation Bells project, explaining how one dimensional
vibration systems (i.e. voices and most instruments) naturally
produce harmonic series, but bells, gongs, and other percussions
instruments vibrate in two or three dimensions, so they don’t
produce harmonic series. Up to that point nobody had been able to
produce bells with harmonic series. He then briefly described how he
arrived at the bell shapes necessary to produce bells with perfect
pitch.
He went on to describe his experiences with the Gamelan
Indonesian percussion orchestras and their use of dissonance as a
musical element.
