Sonology is a

neologism In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...

used to describe the study of

sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the br ...

in a variety of disciplines. In medicine, the term is used in the field of magingto describe the practice of

medical ultrasonography Medical ultrasound includes Medical diagnosis, diagnostic techniques (mainly medical imaging, imaging) using ultrasound, as well as therapeutic ultrasound, therapeutic applications of ultrasound. In diagnosis, it is used to create an image of ...

. According to some scholars, sonology may represent a more advanced application of clinical sonography, chiefly due to the requirement for the use of critical application of both cognitive and radiographic skills in making the diagnostic determination at the time of bedside application of focused ultrasound. The term is also used to describe interdisciplinary research in the field of

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

and

computer music Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and ...

, drawing upon disciplines such as

acoustics Acoustics is a branch of physics that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician ...

electronics Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...

informatics Informatics is the study of computational systems. According to the Association for Computing Machinery, ACM Europe Council and Informatics Europe, informatics is synonymous with computer science and computing as a profession, in which the centra ...

composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography * Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include ...

and

psychoacoustics Psychoacoustics is the branch of psychophysics involving the scientific study of the perception of sound by the human auditory system. It is the branch of science studying the psychological responses associated with sound including noise, speech, ...

. This sense of the term is widely associated with the Institute of Sonology, which was established by composer Gottfried Michael Koenig at the

University of Utrecht Utrecht University (UU; , formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2023, it had an enrollment of 39,769 students, a ...

in 1967 and later moved to the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in 1986. The term has also been adopted to describe the study of electronic music at other institutions, including the Center for Computational Sonology (now "Sound and Music Computing")University of Padova (2010) http://www.dei.unipd.it/wdyn/?IDsezione=3314&IDgruppo_pass=59&preview= Retrieved 2011-02-06. at the

University of Padua The University of Padua (, UNIPD) is an Italian public research university in Padua, Italy. It was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from the University of Bologna, who previously settled in Vicenza; thus, it is the second-oldest ...

, Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo, at the Catalonia College of Music in Barcelona and the

Federal University of Minas Gerais The Federal University of Minas Gerais (, UFMG) is a federalIn the Brazilian Higher Education context, ''Federal'' does not mean ''collegiate'' (even though most Federal Universities in Brazil enjoy a similarly collegiate system), but it means ...

in Brazil.

References

Sound Electronic music Neologisms {{fluiddynamics-stub