Elementi di ACUSTICA Prontuario didattico

For us musicians, acoustics are an important part of our work. A room with an excessively low ceiling, sound that dies after the third row of seats, the wrong sequence of notes at the wrong time. Not forgetting enemy number one: playing outside. Simon Fischer never missed an opportunity to remind me how important the laws of physics are when we play music. A string vibrates differently depending on how taut it is, where and how it’s played and so on. Obviously, this is not news to us. Ultimately, what is the thing we call “technique”, if not the muscle knowledge of the laws of physics involved in the production of sound from our instruments? We practise all our lives, seeking to create sounds that are accurate, clean and full of harmonics, through a series of techniques developed over the centuries. Yet if someone gave us a written sheet with the solution for each of our problems with the instrument, if they invented a machine that could analyse and solve everything…it still wouldn’t be what we were looking for. Acoustics are necessarily the guiding thread that links all fields and all musical genres. And here they are: clear, concise, summarised: in this brief essay on acoustics, Balzani rescues the next generation of music students. (Foreword by Sofia Presta)