LeMo: an assembly kit for musical acoustics education

Abstract

Musical acoustics is a scientific field essential for an in-depth understanding of musical instruments and sounds. As such, it is relevant to wide audiences involved with music, including musicians, composers and even casual listeners. This work describes a twofold approach for introductory, hands-on education in musical acoustics. First, a concise classification approach for acoustic instruments is described. The approach consists of classifying instruments based on their fundamental acoustic properties of vibration generation, resonance and radiation. Then, an assembly kit of modular instrument components is described. The kit contains stand-alone resonator and radiator modules of various types, allowing the assembly of different fully functioning instrument prototypes. Students and general audiences, guided by educators, may use the kit to learn and experience the acoustic behaviour of musical instruments, as well as specific acoustic phenomena.