The purpose of this book is easy to explain. I am a physicist and not a
musician. Yet I am interested in music and am aware of just how much
the two fields have to offer to one another. I would like to make this more
widely known. I believe that your enjoyment of music can be increased
thereby and so can your understanding of physics. Whatever your interest,
a little bit of extra knowledge can only help. It is as simple as that.
There are of course many books on this subject. They are usually written
by physicists (I have never seen one written by a musician telling scientists
what they should know about music). Most of them have what seems
to me a grave fault: they presuppose a certain frame of mind in their readers.
Their early chapters are devoted to simple physics—vibrations, waves,
Fourier analysis, etc. The second half deals with musical instruments, architectural
acoustics, scales, electrical recording and reproduction. It is a
classical scientific approach—theory first and applications later.