Klarinet Archive - Posting 001053.txt from 2003/03

From: "Alan Woodcock" <alan.woodcock@-----.fr>
Subj: Re: [kl] Cylinders vs. Cones
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 02:51:38 -0500

My point (well, Mr Ferron's point, actually) was that not all cones overblow
at the octave, and most cones hardly overblow at all. (In fact, they hardly
blow).

Mr Ferron was not proposing that non-overblowing cones are useful,
he was just demonstrating their existance and explaining why.
I thought this relevant in the context.

Maybe everybody but me had already understood this. Still, it leaves me
perplexed. Who first discovered the "right" cone that made octaves
possible?
Surely not a theoretician ! Since discovering the right cone by trial
and error seems a difficult job, why was the cylindrical clarinet "invented"
after the oboe ?

Sorry if this thread is over by the time you get this; I'm another of those
people who cannot read their mail in real time.

Alan

----- Original Message -----
From: "B. Rite" <b1rite@-----.net>
Subject: Re: [kl] Cylinders vs. Cones

<><> Alan Woodcock wrote:
50 + 55 = 105 Hz
150 + 55 = 205 Hz
250 + 55 = 305 Hz etc

"The instrument will be mistuned and difficult to play [snip] So in
summary: Not all cones overblow at the octave.

I guess I miss the point here. It is possible (and usually
inescapable) to build any instrument a bit out of tune because of
physical practicalities. End effects do exist because an instrument
cannot be infinitely long (in the real world), air has inertia, a
mouthpiece cannot be perfectly conical or cylindrical, the reed or
player's breath creates an "elastic" boundary, etc etc etc.

Many instruments have intentional 'restrictions' (narrowing of bore)
even though, by definition) this violates a perfect cylinder or cone.
These restrictions are necessary in order to cope with a mouthpiece's
"irregular" shape. to cope with the "elastic" boundary, etc etc etc.

Clearly the principle of "octave or twelfth" can be violated in many
ways. The topic of this thread has been to examine one particular
violation (combination of violations, actually) which --- as it turns
out --- also destroys much of the instrument's otherwise playable scale.
It's questionable, therefore, whether you can even call a device with
this particular violation(s) an "instrument" at all.

Cheers,
Bill

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