Introduction to Music Production

Lesson 1 Assignment

Introduction to music
production
Peer Assessment Lesson 1 Assignment
by Christian Perrotta

Introduction
Hello, my name is Christian Perrotta, and I am a Brazilian musician and composer. In this
brief lesson, we are going to cover some topics seen week 1 of Introduction to Music Production
at Coursera.org, specifically the Audio Basics. This written text will be the main tool for this purpose.
I hope this can somehow help you in during this initial part of the course, or perhaps even in later
moments as well.
The four main properties of the sound are as Amplitude, Frequency, Timbre and
Propagation. However, due to the brevity of this assignment, we are going to cover only
Propagation and amplitude in this text.
Rather than just repeating the course material, I want to make some direct relations
between audio and music itself, as well as bring some concepts closer to the reader, using dayto-day examples. As this initial topic concerns to physics a lot, some musicians may feel it easier
to understand if the content is dressed in musical language.

I. Propagation
Sound is wave. It is a vibration. It is not something vibrating; it is the vibration itself, so it
needs something to vibrate, some substance, some medium. For us, this is mostly the air. The air is
vibrating in a way that makes us perceive it as a sound. However, this medium can be many other
things: water, a wall of concrete, a wire it can be yourself! If you stand in front of a very loud
speaker, especially the low register ones, you will feel your whole body vibrating with the music,
as well as your clothes.
Notice that you do not go away with the wave. It does not carry you with it. In fact, the
wave uses you to vibrate, so that it can go on, making other things vibrate to continue the
propagation. The sound does not remain the same, though. If it changes from air to concrete, for
example, its speed will change, amongst other things.
Those are not the only things that can make a sound wave to change rate:

Temperature (how hot is it there?)

Introduction to Music Production

Humidity (how dry is the air dry?)

Altitude (how high is your location?)

Lesson 1 Assignment

These parameters do change the speed of the sound wave, but it is not much noticeable.
Therefore, the speed remains almost the same, which is:

340 meters per seconds

1 foot per millisecond

1 kilometer in 3 seconds

1 mile in 5 seconds

We are able to perceive this speed as well. Because sound takes some time to move
from here to there, our ears (actually, our brain) can measure the delay it may cause. Lets look
at this common example:

If you make some loud sound in a big closed place, you may hear your own voice again,
but a bit delayed. This is the echo. The sound may move very fast, but in these situations, not fast
enough, so our brain hears it as two distinct sounds: one that comes directly from our mouth (it is
close to our ears) and one that goes to a distant wall, reflects and comes back.
Not only can our brain understand it very well, but it can also distinguish between a sound
coming from the left and one coming from the right. Thanks to this ability, we can turn to the
correct direction when we hear some unexpected noise.
All these concepts can be directly applied in our audio projects. When we work with
echoes, reverb, delay and panning, for example, we are dealing with the audio propagation.

II. Amplitude
This parameter is related to intensity of the sound. We perceive this as loudness. They are
two different words because (amplitude and loudness) because humans perceive the wave
amplitude behavior in a different way than it really behaves.

Introduction to Music Production

Lesson 1 Assignment

If we look at a wave shape, we can spot the amplitude by measuring its height, from the
lowest point to the highest one. Even if the wave is not transversal, we can do the same procedure,
as its representation is just like a transversal one.

The height of
the wave is its
amplitude.

Therefore, big amplitude means great

intensity of sound, perceived by us as a loud
sound. Most musicians will call it dynamic, even
using terms like piano, forte, mezzo forte etc.
These Italian words are used principally by
classical musicians. However, physicists (and us,
music producers) use decibels (dB) to measure
amplitude.
There are no precise correlation between
musical dynamic and decibels. Although you may
find in some textbooks that a pianissimo should
sound level of 50 dB, this is far from an absolute
information. It really depends on the instrument,
the context, the place etc.
The standard use of decibels in most of the
cases is the Decibels of Sound Pressure Level
dBSPL (check the chart aside).
When we enter the computer domain,
however, we do not use the same scale of
decibels. The dBSPL is then replaced by dBFS
Decibels of Full Scale.
The dBFS takes the computer as a
reference to measure sound amplitude. In this
scale, 0 dB is the loudest possible sound the
computer can handle. When going below zero,
the sound becomes quieter.
Because audio signal will come from many
different

sources

(instruments,

microphones,

SOME SOUND LEVEL

EXAMPLES
Here is a small chart that may illustrate
the decibel levels in a way easier to
understand. For some given sound
sources in the list below, there are
corresponding levels in decibels
(dBSPL).
SOURCE

dB

Jet aircraft, 50 m away

140

Threshold of pain

130

Threshold of discomfort

120

Chainsaw, 1 m distance

110

Disco, 1 m from speaker

100

Diesel truck, 10 m away

90

Kerbside of busy road, 5 m

80

Vacuum cleaner, 1 m

70

Conversational speech, 1 m

60

Average home

50

Quiet library

40

Quiet bedroom at night

30

Background in TV studio

20

Rustling leaves in the distance 10

Hearing threshold

Introduction to Music Production

Lesson 1 Assignment

computer, synthesizer), it will not always have a common volume. Thus, in order to maintain a
balanced level throughout the entire system, these parameters must be carefully watched and
adjusted.

Reflection
I really hope this text can somehow help you to understand better some topics from
week 1. I really liked to share some knowledge I have with you.
If there is anything that remained unclear, poorly explained or inaccurate, please let me
know. Besides, what do you think could improve this work? I think that an audio recording or a
slide presentation would improve this work a lot.
Thanks for reading.