Musical acoustics, the music student, and the music teacher
Knut Guettler · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1999
Dialogs between musicians and acousticians are not always successful. A lack of common language combined with mutual suspicion of the other person trespassing on ones own professional authority, often restricts what ought to have been a fruitful exchange of knowledge. For the music student, there is, however, a third matter that seriously impedes the possibility of gaining acoustical insight. As for all arts, yearning and intuition are the driving forces in the development of musical and instrumental skills. Focus on purely technical matters, or even worse, the feeling of being overruled by such, is hardly combinable with a desirable musical progress of the young student. Based on the author’s experience as a principal professional player and teacher of music for more than 30 years, this paper gives some suggestions on which and how topics in musical acoustics may be introduced.