Page 8 - Spring2020

From the Editor | Arthur N. Popper
One of the things I like best about attending meetings of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is that I get ideas for new articles for Acoustics Today (AT). I get these ideas by attending sessions, networking in the halls and at social events,
and from the presentations at the awards session. Of course, I also greatly value the opportunity to attend sessions in the areas that interest me, meet with current and poten- tial AT authors, and participate in a number of committee meetings. Indeed, I don’t consider the meeting a complete success unless I can get ideas for enough articles for several future issues of AT. So I consider the San Diego meeting a very great success.
Although normally the article ideas are for AT issues perhaps a year later (to give authors time to write for AT), this meet- ing was an exception. On Wednesday evening, I attended a special ASA session that was a concert by the Hutchins Consort (see hutchinsconsort.org), a group that uses instru- ments designed and built by legendary ASA member and past Silver Medal in Music recipient Dr. Carleen Hutchins. Sitting at the concert next to Dr. Murray Campbell, the cur- rent winner of the Silver Medal in Music, I realized that many members of the ASA, including myself, know little or nothing about Hutchins. This led to the idea of doing an AT article about her. Getting such an article turned out to be rather easy because the author of a Hutchins biography and winner of the ASA Science Writing Award this year, Quincy
Whitney, opened the concert, and so I talked with her. The outcome is that the first article in this issue of AT, adapted from the biography, is about Hutchins. I think anyone who knew Dr. Hutchins will find the article a wonderful adden- dum to their knowledge. And those who do not yet know of Hutchins and her instruments are in for a real treat. I thank Quincy Whitney and the Hutchins Consort for their cooperation. It has been a delight to work with them.
(As an aside, the concert had the added bonus that when I sat with Dr. Campbell, I invited him to write about the physics of musical instruments, and he quickly agreed to do that in a future issue of AT. So, the “bottom line” is that
if you see me at an ASA meeting, beware. I may be about to invite you to do an article for AT!)
Ofcourse,thisissueofAThasmanyotherarticlesofinterest. In the second article, Scott Hawley, Vasileios Chatziioannou, and Andrew Morrison write about the synthesis of musical instrument sounds. However, even though the article focuses on instruments, the ideas discussed could pertain to any of us who need special sounds in our work.
The third article by Walt Jesteadt is about the history of hear- ing research at the fabled Boys Town (Omaha, NE). Of course, many of us primarily know Boys Town from the classic movie starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney. However, as Walt shares with us, the institution has made and continues to make important contributions to hearing research, and its member- ship includes many members (past and present) of the ASA.
Frank Russo shares ideas about how we perceive music in the fourth article. Frank points out that although there are portions of the human brain that are primed to respond to music, how we perceive music is more than as sound. It also has input from several other senses.
Continuing with the theme of how we perceive the world, the fifth article by Michael Vorländer is about virtual reality. Starting with a description of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Michael shares with us the issues of bringing sound to virtual reality. Although we are not quite at the point where we can replicate the Holodeck from Star Trek, there is great prog- ress in this technology that Michael explains. (And, as an aside, do the Trekkies reading this editorial know when the Holodeck was first introduced into the Star Trek universe? If you don’t know and cannot find the answer, drop either Michael or myself a note.)
Finally, the sixth article is by Peter Worcester, Matthew Dzieciuch, and Hanne Sagen. The authors talk about the Arctic and issues related to how one measures changes in that changing environment. Of course, they focus on an array of fascinating acoustic measures and point out that with climate change, everything in the Arctic is changing,
including the acoustics.
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8 | Acoustics Today | Spring 2020