Pictures that demonstrate physical phenomena are important in science, so also in musical acoustics. In optics, interference, diffraction and polarization phenomena are for instance often pictured in text books. Phase contrast methods are used in microscopy to visualize transparent objects. Such methods have numerous applications in medicine and biology. Shadowgraph, schlieren and different kinds of classical interferometry setups are used in fluid mechanics to study laminar flow, turbulence, convection, subsonic and supersonic flow, shock waves etc. Propagating sound fields often accompany supersonic flow and shock waves. Also transparent object fields like sound and temperature fields can be pictured using optical measuring methods. Merits of these methods are that they are contactless, nondisturbing and wholefield methods. In this paper, some modern optical methods are presented that has the sensitivity and spatial resolution needed to visualize and measure sound fields in musical acoustics. They are computerized, all-electronic methods that present pictures but also give quantitative measures. Harmonic vibrations, standing waves, repetitive sequences and transient wave propagation will be addressed. TV holography, pulsed TV holography and scanning laser Doppler vibrometry (LDV), or scanning vibrometry will be discussed. Speckle photography and correlation methods like digital speckle photography (DSP) and particle image velocimetry (PIV) will also be shortly presented