Hearing Music and Psychoacoustics

Music has been taught to be heard and understood through the ears. We as a society have been taught this from a very young age. Hearing is considered to be one of the most important senses a human being can possess. With hearing comes perception of sound and this sound perception has three elements. The three elements are vibrations, transmissions, and perceivers. Biologically the ear is broken down into three sections. The outer ear is the visible ear, ear canal, and the eardrum. The middle ear is between the eardrum and the cochlea. Lastly, the inner ear is connected to the eardrum by three bones. The hammer, anvil, and the stirrup all make up the ossicles found in the inner ear.

Music can be psychologically perceived through various physical attributes of sound. Some of these attributes are time, frequency, amplitude, and shape. Some major concepts within perception and psychoacoustics are the concept of critical band, place theory, spectral pitch, periodicity, and volley theory. Within psychology of music there are many variable that make up the perception of sound. These variable are pitch, loudness, timbre, duration, volume and density. One of the main takeaways from this concept should be that we don't take our perceptions directly from the physical characteristics of the individual sound. If we did, then we would all hear the same sounds all the time. 

According to Acoustics Today, "Psychoacoustics is usually broadly described as auditory perception or just hearing, although the latter term also includes the biological aspects of hearing(physiological acoustics)" (acousticstoday.org). Some key examples of psychoacoustics are shouting from a large distance and then whispering next to someone. In closing, perception and psychoacoustics will create a pathway for future topics of discussion such as music cognition and how music effects the brain.