Klarinet Archive - Posting 000106.txt from 2002/11

From: b5w@-----.net (William Wright)
Subj: Re: [kl] This thing on my front door
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2002 11:16:44 -0500

<><> Joseph=A0Wakeling wrote:
[snip of an excellent essay] But as Tony has pointed out this simply
isn't what happens physically. The vibration occurs *simultaneously*
throughout the length of the instrument (and the player's oral cavity).

Without meaning to attack your *excellent* post:

I'd like to point out that if you examine the situation at a detailed
level of resolution (but not all the way down to the quantum level,
where nobody has unravelled all the details), you are dealing with
accumulations of stored energy, not with the dreaded "action at a
distance", otherwise known as "simultaneity". That is: the reed
springs back because it was already bent (stored energy), the air
molecule reverses direction because of stored pressure on one side and
reduced pressure on the other side, etc. And we must deal with the
opposing effects of inertia.

Is this of any *practical* importance to a musician? Probably not....
unless you begin to think about attacks on individual notes.

Cheers,
Bill

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