Graeme Huon introduced our speaker Neil McLachlan, Associate Professor of the Melbourne University School of Psychological Sciences who was to present to us on Sound and Emotion.

Graeme outlined Neil’s wide range of experience as a researcher in the Departments of Engineering, Architecture, Psychology and Music, as well as working professionally as a performer, instrument designer, and acoustic consultant.

Neil started by introducing the idea of an “auditory brain”, and understanding sound from a psychological perspective. He gave us a quick summary of his work on the Federation Bells project, explaining how one dimensional vibration systems (i.e. voices and most instruments) naturally produce harmonic series, but bells, gongs, and other percussions instruments vibrate in two or three dimensions, so they don’t produce harmonic series. Up to that point nobody had been able to produce bells with harmonic series. He then briefly described how he arrived at the bell shapes necessary to produce bells with perfect pitch.
He went on to describe his experiences with the Gamelan Indonesian percussion orchestras and their use of dissonance as a musical element.