Last week, one of our senior consultants, Andrew VonFeldt, had the opportunity to serve as a guest lecturer for Joseph Parisi’s Acoustics for Music Teachers class at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

His presentation started off with an overview of architectural acoustics history, followed by a practical checklist of subjective acoustical descriptors that students can use to help evaluate the acoustical quality of their rehearsal and performance spaces. From there, the class discussed various acoustical metrics that can be used to measure or predict the acoustics in a space..

Andrew then walked them through some examples of acoustic materials and their intended uses. Next, he went into some acoustic goals for typical music rehearsal and performance spaces. To bring things together, he presented a typical design process that students might go through if they were renovating an existing space or building a new one. The class used the Grant Hall recital hall project on campus, where the lecture was held, as a framework for this design process discussion. Giving the students a real-world case study helped show them how the knowledge learned in this lecture could be applied.

Andrew is grateful for this opportunity to share his acoustic knowledge with a class of students who appreciate the value of good acoustics. He appreciated that the small class size allowed time for deeper discussions and for students to raise detailed questions.