Dr. Leonardo Fuks presents his lecture "Combining Music Acoustics, Instrument Building/Invention and Performance: A Brazilian Experience"

Department of Multimedia Systems along with the Gdansk University of Technology AES Student Section hosted a lecture entitled Combining Music Acoustics, Instrument Building/Invention and Performance: A Brazilian Experience by Dr. Leonardo Fuks, a professor of Music and Acoustics at the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Escola de Musica da UFRJ-UNIVERSIDADE DO BRASIL) on March 13 2007.

Prof. Bozena Kostek introduced Dr. Fuks to the audience presenting some facts from his CV. Having background in music and mechanical engineering this provides him a unique mixture of interests that leads to research on musical instrument physics. Dr. Fuks started his lecture with the basics of why musical instruments sound as they do. He then discussed issues related to the analysis of musical instrument sounds, taking into account acoustical, physiological and perceptual aspects of wind instrument, as well as vocal-ventricular fold phonation.

In the second part of his lecture he presented a project called Cyclophonica (Bicycle Chamber Orchestra), which means musicians on bicycles performing a variety of music in a variety of styles, and later another one related to inventing new rules and instructions while playing/performing in a gymnasium. The second project presented showed that it is possible to use musical instruments for playing in a gymnasium, and vice versa, participating in athletics can lead to music making. It may require fine motor control, but gives a lot of satisfaction and excitements and benefits both performers and the audience.

The presentation was very well received by the students, especially when Dr. Fuks started to enhance the issue that a skilled musician can play on any instrument. To prove this point he performed on his cellular phone. Later on one could observed some students competing with each other using their own cellular phones while composing a melody and playing it. At the end of the lecture there were many questions asked. Prof. B. Kostek thanked Dr. Leonardo Fuks for his very interesting lecture and this concluded the meeting.

Some photos from this meeting (click on photo to see larger version):