Klarinet Archive - Posting 000179.txt from 1995/02

From: Jonathan Cohler <cohler@-----.NET>
Subj: Re: Various
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 18:32:36 -0500

>(1) NON-LINEARITY!? Jonathan C. didn't seem to say a lot about the acoustic
>results of tonguing the reed. Personally, I would welcome some more on this (
>even more? Why not - it was well worth reading..).

Tonguing creates an attack transient that lasts between 20ms to 50ms with
the longer attack times on the lower notes. (Attack time is arbitrarily
defined as the time from onset to the time 50% of full amplitude is
reached.) Attack quality is one of the most important elements in allowing
a listener to discern what instrument is playing. It is much more
significant, in fact, than tone quality. Several studies have shown that a
short segment of tone with attack, is much more easily identified than a
relatively long segment of tone without attack.

One reason for this is that the spectrum of the tone changes dramatically
over the course of the attack. With wind instruments the attack generally
begins with mostly low partials and gradually adds the high partials. With
string playing the opposite is true.

This is a pretty complicated subject, and I've only touched on the surface
here, but I hope it helps.

------------------------

Jonathan Cohler
cohler@-----.net