Partial copy of the music-dsp list's conversation:
On 15 Sep 2009, at 12:26, Danijel Domazet wrote:
Hi music-dsp,
I'd like to learn about mathematics of music. Could someone please
recommend a book on this? Focus should be on the math, not on the
whole music theory, if possible...
responses:
Victor Lazzarini:
"I like this one:
http://www.maths.abdn.ac.uk/~bensondj/html/maths-music.html
Victor"
BrightBoy:
"This seems like one of the obvious choices:
Cheers,
Jeff"
Andy Farnell:
"I found Dave Bensons book interesting.
http://www.maths.abdn.ac.uk/~bensondj/html/maths-music.html
Of course if you're serious a classic like Moore is the thing
http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Computer-Music-Richard-Moore/dp/0132525526
For cheap and cheerful you can get oldies like Elmore and Heald or
Olson in Dover for pennies these days.
http://www.amazon.com/Music-Physics-Engineering-Harry-Olson/dp/0486217698
Bear in mind that if you really want to understand the 'math' of music
you will have to stray beyond 'math books' into the realms of physics
and psychology too."
douglas repetto:
"Great suggestions so far! Just a reminder that we have lots of book
reviews by list members on the music-dsp website:
http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp
If you'd like to contribute something please let me know!
douglas"
Michael Gogins:
"Don't expect this to be small, quick, or easy.
This is an extremely deep field with over 200 years of work from world
class thinkers such as Fourier, Helmholtz, and Gabor. It overlaps with
extensive, very well funded cutting edge, secret research on signal
processing for military and spy purposes.
_A Computer Music Tutorial_ has an out of date but useful
introduction. Gareth Loy has two books, one on sounds and one on
notes, MusiMathathics I and II, that may be useful. Many computer
music people start with Ken Steiglitz' _A DSP Primer_. There are
numerous graduate texts on digital signal processing, either in
general or focused on audio and music.
You would be well advised to do your reading in tandem with a signal
processing language. DSP researchers use MatLab, Octave can also be
used. If you have Mathematica, that is an excellent tool because you
can hear any function or graph. Music researchers use any or all of
these as well as Csound, Pure Data, or other programmable software
synthesizers.
The author of Pure Data, Miller Puckette, has an online book that
provides a pretty basic introduction that could nevertheless be useful
because you can play with the examples in PD and hear everything, at
http://crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/techniques.htm.
_The Csound Book_ actually covers a lot of the same ground in a
scattered sort of way, but also with useful examples.
Hope this helps,
Mike"
Martin Eisenberg
"Does anyone know a current URL for Rocchesso's Introduction to
Sound Processing? The link reachable from his homepage at Verona
doesn't work for me."
Richard Dobson:
"This one works (I have just downloaded the file):
http://profs.sci.univr.it/~rocchess/SP/sp.pdf "
Jerry:
"As long as we're throwing out titles, how about
DAFX: Digital Audio Effects, edited by Zölzer, and
Digital Audio Signal Processing, also by Zölzer "
Chuckk Hubbard:
"Any book with Wendy Carlos, Harry Partch, and Adriaan Fokker is fine with me.
For psychology I enjoyed Meyer's 'Emotion and Meaning in Music'.
-Chuckk"