[MUSIC PLAYING]
DAN TRUEMAN: Musical instruments are
amazingly interdisciplinary.
I mean, basically, to understand what's
going on with a musical instrument involves touching
on so many different disciplines,
whether it's physics and acoustics or perception
and cognition.
Whether it's interfacing -- like how we interface with machines
or devices through something like the keyboard or the violin
bow.
MAYA KEREN: I'm currently undecided about my major,
but I'm definitely interested in music.
And I'm also thinking about computer science.
This class is basically the intersection of those two
interests, in addition to some other topics
like physics and math.
AATISH BHATIA: I co-teach this course with Dan Trueman.
And I think having this interdisciplinary approach,
we have many different perspectives
on the same question, and they all kind of
build upon each other.
And so to me, that's one of the things that's
really exciting about collaborative teaching,
is that it allows us to build on each other's perspectives
and really build, I think, a more well-rounded course.
[CHATTER]
ELI BERMAN: So today, we're building some overtone flutes
out of some PVC pipes.
So using the natural resonance of these materials to
activate different frequencies.
We figure out what fundamental pitch
we want to be the base level pitch of the instrument,
and then we calculate how long the PVC pipe should be.
SUBJECT: It's between 28 and 28.01.
MAYA KEREN: Perfect Let's do that.
Basically, my lens in how I see music
is very influenced by my path as a jazz pianist.
And I think this class is going to open up
this whole new realm of possibilities for me
in terms of where I can take the music.
[FLUTE PLAYING]
ELI BERMAN: I had never gone through the process
of making any instrument.
So it's really fascinating to be able to see the care
that's needed to create an instrument that works at all,
or that sounds at all.
And then to see what other details can be made to make it
work in the way that you want to.
DAN TRUEMAN: Eli and I were listening
to the same pair of notes, and they
were hearing different difference tones in their head
then I was hearing.
So we were just hearing different things
based on our experience, based on, probably, our physiology.
It's a really important lesson to learn for young musicians --
that there's no absolute sound that we're all hearing.
Like, it's a very personal thing.
And that's an important thing to know and realize
when you're sharing music with other people,
and you're trying to be empathetic and understand what
other people are experiencing.
AATISH BHATIA: Music is one example of a place where
you can experience it and you can enjoy it
without necessarily having an understanding of what
makes things sound good.
But once you're at that place, gaining that understanding --
so like, trying to use math and science and physics
to understand what is actually happening when I hear a violin
note, or what is actually happening when I hear a chord
that I really like --
that adds to our understanding of it.
So I think finding spaces where science, engineering,
math, intersect with things like music
that people are often already passionate about
is the really interesting way for me
to try to bridge these things together and try to make
science more accessible.
[FLUTE PLAYING]
MAYA KEREN: I think that any way that you kind of see music
from a different lens, whether it's
from a historical lens or a very theoretical lens --
and in this sense, it's kind of like a physical and scientific
lens, if you're going to make new discoveries.
And I think in this case a lot of the discoveries
are based on digging up what is the actual physical
and scientific foundations of how music is made in the world.
[MUSIC PLAYING]