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Sound travels farther and faster in water than in air. Therefore, the introduction of artificial noise can interfere substantially with reproductive behaviors that include the production and reception of auditory signals. Sound production associated with reproductive behavior among marine fishes serves to synchronize the behavior of potential mates, thereby leading to successful fertilization. This chapter examines the role played by sound production and acoustic communication in the reproductive biology of many marine fish species. It summarizes findings concerning bioacoustics in shallow, tropical marine fishes (that is, coral reef fishes) and outlines the fish families known for sound production. The hope is that this status report will encourage further research in fish acoustic communication and underwater acoustic ecology. The evidence so far indicates that many coral reef fishes are most acoustically active during reproduction. It seems that some species produce sounds only when courting and mating, and not at all at other times.

This chapter offers remarkable evidence of vocal flexibility in pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, and walruses), species whose learning capabilities are surprising indeed, and discusses published experiments and new observations on their vocal usage and production learning capabilities. It shows that some pinnipeds can learn to alter the contexts in which they emit natural vocalizations, as well as modify their call structure along several structural dimensions, to an extent not known to occur in most terrestrial mammals. The chapter suggests that pinnipeds do have some degree of voluntary control over their sound emissions and reveals that the walrus observations exhibit plasticity in sound production in a particularly vocal species with a strong potential for complex communicative interactions during development.

When a musical instrument converts energy into sound, it makes aspects of the player’s action audible. This chapter analyzes this action-sound coupling in various instruments, drawing on ecological acoustics, organology, and cybernetics. It introduces a distinction between two aspects of sound production—“activation” and “control”—either of which may come from the player or the instrument. Pipe organs, for example, are activated by nonhuman power sources, though the pitches are controlled by the organist. Barrel organs, by contrast, are activated by human energy, but the pitches are preprogrammed. Instrumental sound production also involves distinctive combinations of sonic, visual, and tactile feedback. Moreover, by adapting Merleau-Ponty’s work on the body schema, this theory of action-sound coupling accounts for the feeling, often reported by performers, that an instrument is an extension of the body.

This chapter examines fossil and neurological evidence for the development of control of vocalization and for the evolution of the ear and sound perception. It discusses evidence for the evolution of the vocal control of the brain, the neurology of vocal production in primates and humans, and the relation between the evolution of sound-production capabilities and the evolution of other physiological features. This chapter also states that the ability to perform emotional vocal expression involving orofacial control and laryngeal activation seems to have been present in all primates on the lineage from rhesus monkeys to humans and that some features of auditory perception are obviously very ancient, being present in mammalian audition generally.

The study of Romance sounds, and their structure, has for centuries occupied a fundamental position in core phonetic and phonological research. And for good reason. By examining the typological symmetries and asymmetries among the different Romance languages we have learned much about the universal properties of language and the production/perception mechanisms which underscore acquisition and sound change. This provides a rich terrain in which to formulate and test new hypotheses related to sound systems and their development. The commissioned authors in the current volume present recent research in the acoustic, articulatory, phonological, perceptual, and acquisition domains from an array of theoretical foci. The work presented here is sure to have a far-reaching impact in the speech sciences for many years to come.

This chapter addresses how musicians can establish their personal techniques to improve their musicality. All musicians agree that music techniques need to be stable, reliable, accurate, flexible, and immediate even though they vary depending on performers' style. There are two principles considered in discussing musical techniques: first, all techniques exists to serve the music, and second, all musicians must listen. The chapter discusses the factors that affect the physical skills necessary for performances of musicians. It groups them into five-physical components of technical stability, instrumental acoustics and the mechanics of sound production, movement and accuracy, the cognitive processes, and musicians' health and injury prevention.