Colgate University

First-Year Course Offerings — Fall 2023

CORE S180   The Science of Music
Credits1
RestrictionsInstr perm req during Drop/Add
Pre-Requisites
Co-Requisites
Core Area Sciences
Area of Inquiry
Liberal Arts Practices

What is music? How do natural raw sounds become a musical phenomenon? Why are some combinations of sounds more pleasant than others? The answers to these questions are tightly related to the concepts of matter, energy, time and space. Where there is music, there is sound; and where there is sound, there is physics. Students explore the underlying principles of the musical phenomena, including acoustics of musical instruments, formation of scales and perception of sound.