Interdisplinary Physical Music: A Blind Spot in Education on Acoustics
Stephen Gbakobachukwu Onwubiko, Andrea Calilhanna · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2020
In attaining a degree in music, education on musical acoustics is multidisciplinary. Musical acoustics contains specialized knowledge, history, methodology, and practices, yet music itself is interdisciplinary. Ideally, acousticians recognize and validate that music is scientific and so, turn a blind eye or pay little attention to interdisciplinary physical music (i.e., migrating from music to musical acoustics). This paper examines the critical fault line erupting beneath the structural foundations of music through musical acoustics to navigate questions seldomly asked. These questions include–who should teach interdisciplinary physical music, e.g., music and mathematics, musical acoustics, psychoacoustics, what are the sets of curriculum standards and evaluation procedures suitable for the inter-multidisciplinary physical music. Finally, the paper proposes the reason why these paths are seldom crossed and provides a solution: a psychoacoustic approach to mathematical music theory as conduit to the intersection of fields with concepts traversing many disciplines.