<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Tantalizing acoustic secrets revealed.... partially.
Review: First off, this is a physicist's book. It is worth bearing in mind that this book is a PhD thesis, and has that format: there are lots of equations, with a few charts on almost every page. That will probably put a lot of people off. Still, if you really want to understand, in a quantitative way, the acoustics of woodwinds, I haven't found another book that approaches it as directly as this one (Fletcher and Rossing's book is encyclopedic in its coverage of instruments, and therefore necessarily thin on specifics of particular instruments). You probably don't need a PhD to read it, but certainly a master's degree to get much out of it.First, the bad news: I think the layout could be improved: the sections are numbered in order from the start of the book right through to the end, rather than in a chapter-by-chapter way. This makes it difficult to find section 27 (for example), because there's no way to narrow down where it might be. The notes added for this edition could have been integrated into the main text, rather than being appended. Still, I suppose the readership may not be large enough to warrant such a thorough overhauling. The good news: This book lays it all out for you, if in a rather terse way. It's broken down into four chapters, roughly corresponding to introduction, bore, toneholes, applications. The math is heavy at times, and is not helped by the choice to print in two columns on each page, thereby causing a lot of equations to be broken over two lines. Also the choice of variable names is not particularly mnemonic, so I found myself constantly referring back a few pages, to remind myself of their meaning. Still, it starts off generically, develops general models, then applies them to each of the classical instruments: flute, sax, clarinet, oboe, bassoon. My greatest wish for future editions of the book would be to augment how much is left unsaid. Each chapter concludes with a half-page summary. More than once, I found myself reading something in the summary that I couldn't recall from the text. But by studying the charts and equations closely, and doing a few back-of-the-envelope calculations, I found that it really was there. (An example would be at the end of Ch.2, where there's a mention of how conical-bore instruments can be overblown in the octave until the truncation ratio reaches about 0.2. It's not explicitly stated in the main text, but you can see it, with a little thought, from the charts on the facing page.) So I feel that the book could really be enhanced with some more textual analysis. I hope the author has a chance to re-work this book - there's clearly so much between the lines.
Rating: 
Summary: Technical review
Review: This book has all the information needed to understand and design a woodwind instrument, at least flutes, which I am involved with. It is written clearly, explicitly, and distantly, in all detail, yet with no wasted words or tangential discussions. It is well organized clear and definitive. One can use it to design, flutes with small holes and no keys as were used in the 18th century; wooden classical flutes of the 19 century with or without keys; or modern flutes of the late 19th and 20th century. Design of key works is not included, just acoustical design. Tables are few but with today's calculators, tables are almost obsolete. The previous reviewer said that a Ph. D. in physics is needed to use the book because of the mathematical sophistication. More accurate, would be, an M.S. degree in high frequency electrical engineering, transmission lines and microwave cavity design. The mathematics and physical concepts used in woodwind design were barrowed from electrical transmission and antenna design; concepts like characteristic admittance, standing wave ratios, and impedance matching. However, if one is a physicist or advanced engineer in any field, one can obtain these basic concepts from transmission line theory books with little difficulty, assuming you are at home with basic differential and integral calculus and complex variables. I see no flaws in this book and highly recommend it with 5 stars. Nelson McAvoy
Rating:
Summary: Technical review
Review: This book has all the information needed to understand and design a woodwind instrument, at least flutes, which I am involved with. It is written clearly, explicitly, and distantly, in all detail, yet with no wasted words or tangential discussions. It is well organized clear and definitive. One can use it to design, flutes with small holes and no keys as were used in the 18th century; wooden classical flutes of the 19 century with or without keys; or modern flutes of the late 19th and 20th century. Design of key works is not included, just acoustical design. Tables are few but with today's calculators, tables are almost obsolete. The previous reviewer said that a Ph. D. in physics is needed to use the book because of the mathematical sophistication. More accurate, would be, an M.S. degree in high frequency electrical engineering, transmission lines and microwave cavity design. The mathematics and physical concepts used in woodwind design were barrowed from electrical transmission and antenna design; concepts like characteristic admittance, standing wave ratios, and impedance matching. However, if one is a physicist or advanced engineer in any field, one can obtain these basic concepts from transmission line theory books with little difficulty, assuming you are at home with basic differential and integral calculus and complex variables. I see no flaws in this book and highly recommend it with 5 stars. Nelson McAvoy
<< 1 >>
| 
