Sounds of Music
Welcome to Sounds of Music! In this event, teams must construct and tune one device prior to the tournament based on a one-octave 12-tone equal tempered scale and complete a written test on the physics of sound and music concepts.
The information below should not be interpreted as an extension of the rules. You can find free online copies of the current rules for download on the 2023 Rules page of the Science Olympiad website. The official rules in the current Rules Manual take precedence.
Resources & Links
- Song Excerpt for the National Tournament (04/03/23) - Teams competing at the 2023 National Tournament held at Wichita State University May 19th & 20th will need to play this excerpt from Robin Adair. This excerpt should not be used for any other tournaments except Nationals. As presented here, this song must be transposed down into an appropriate key for your instrument so that all notes are within the scorable range. As currently written, the excerpt contains unscorable notes.
- Revised Song Excerpt for State Tournaments (11/15/22) - The excerpt of Battle Hymn of the Republic original published in the Rules should be discarded and all State Tournaments should use this version where the notes below G4 were re-written to different notes within the G4 to G5 octave.
- Sounds of Music Pitch Tester
- Crafts and Hobbies: Woodworking: Building Musical Instruments
- Building PVC Flutes
- Making simple flutes from PVC pipe
- How to make a DIY PVC Overtone Flute
- DIY 2 string musical instrument
- Introduction to the Canjo
- Anatomy of a Canjo
- The Physics Classroom: Sound Waves & Music
- Examples from previous years:
- Waves Resources from MY SO
Science Olympiad Store Materials
- 2023 National Test Packet
- Sounds of Music Digital Download DVD
Practice Problems & Tests
- Practice Test - 2023 Sierra Vista Invitational
- Practice Test - 2023 University of Michigan Invitational
- Practice Test - 2023 University of Chicago Invitational
- Practice Test - 2022 UT Austin Invitational
- Practice Test - 2022 Highlands Invitational
- Practice Test - 2022 BullSO Invitational
- Practice Test - 2022 National Invitational
- Practice Test - 2022 UChicago Invitational
- Practice Test - 2021 UT Austin Invitational
- Practice Test - 2021 Troy High School Invitational
- Practice Test - 2021 BirdSO Invitational
Event Supervisor Resources
In addition to the resources on the Event Supervisors page, Sounds of Music Event Supervisors should be sure to use the following resources:
- Science Olympiad Mathematics Guidelines for Physics Events - The Science Olympiad Physics Rules Committee has prepared these guidelines to help Event Supervisors target their questions to the mathematical ability that students bring to the events. This information may be useful to teams as they assign team members to Physics Events as well as they prepare for those events.
- Event Logistics Manual
- Sounds of Music Pitch Tester
- 2023 Sounds of Music Event Supervisor Guide
- 2023 Score sheet and team checklist
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