Principles of Musical Acoustics

Prof. William Hartmann is Professor of Physics at Michigan State University. His research focuses on psychoacoustics and sound perception, and he first taught his course on musical acoustics for undergraduates in 1974.

In 1981-82 Dr. Hartmann took a leave of absence to work as a visiting scientist at the Institute for Research on Acoustics and Music (IRCAM) in Paris. He subsequently served at IRCAM as acting director of acoustics (1982-1983) and, supported by a NSF-CNRS grant, as consultant (1983-1987).

Dr. Hartmann has been a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America since 1983. He was chairman of the Technical Committee on Musical Acoustics from 1980 to 1984. From 1992-1995 he served on the Society's Executive Council and was chairman of the External Affairs Administrative Council (1994-1995). He gave the Society Tutorial at the spring meeting in 1996 entitled, "Pitch, Periodicity and the Brain." He served as vice president of the Society (1998-1999) and as president (2001-2002). As president, he worked to enhance the Society's connections with allied organizations such as the Institute for Noise Control Engineering, and to expand the Society's presence internationally.

In 2001 Dr. Hartmann received the Distinguished Faculty Award from Michigan State University and the Helmholtz-Rayleigh Silver Medal from the Acoustical Society of America. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Springer's Modern Acoustics and Signal Processing Series.