We are pleased to announce the seminar “The role of the acoustics engineer in the musical instrument industry”, which will be held by Tahvanainen Henna, PhD student at the Aalto University in Finland, on December 11th (this Friday) from 4.45pm to 6.00pm.
Join the seminar (open to all) in this Webex room:
https://politecnicomilano.webex.com/meet/mirco.pezzoli
Abstract
The acoustic engineer in the musical instrument industry works at the boundary between luthiery and acoustics. One of the main goals is to be able to do computer-aided design of musical instruments up to the point that we can listen the instruments prior to building them. Another goal is to be able to understand to structure-acoustic behavior of the instrument. Ultimately, we would like to build high quality instruments that suit a specific purpose and has the acoustic characteristics that the user wanted. This talk is an introduction to the guitar industry, the work of a guitar engineer, and the setup of numerical modelling tools for guitar engineering in the industrial context.Biography: I am passionate about acoustics, music, and musical instruments. My research focus is on analysis, simulation, and perception of both concert halls and musical instruments. For my master thesis, I modelled the acoustics of a Finnish string instrument called kantele to complete my studies in Acoustics and Audio Signal Processing at Aalto University in Finland. Currently, I am finalizing my doctorate on concert hall acoustics there. My passion has taken me to work as a research engineer on acoustic guitars at Yamaha Corporation, Japan and to intern on sound in VR at Facebook Reality Labs in the US. Currently, I am teaching digital signal processing for music technology students at Uniarts in Helsinki, and I work as an acoustics specialist at A-Insinöörit with a focus on acoustical modelling and room acoustics. I am also collaborating with kantele builders to research more on the acoustics of the instrument. I am a hobbyist kantele player since 1990.
