Klarinet Archive - Posting 000175.txt from 2011/06

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Mouthpiece Facings and Breath Span
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2011 06:33:11 -0400

On 06/21/2011 12:40 AM, hns692@-----.com wrote:
> You could only do certain things with that experiment in that it is using
> only an artificial embouchure. The broad spectrum you're suggesting will
> provide certain information; but will it actually work when tested with
> humans?

Well, you don't know until you've tried, do you? Any experimental model
has -- of necessity -- to be a constrained and restricted subset of the
real phenomena of nature. But as a first approximation you can say, "I
assume that the effect of the embouchure and tongue is negligible and
the dominant factors are air pressure and volume of air flow."

So you make your observations, and maybe you find some meaningful
relationships and maybe you don't, but anyway, you find out something,
even if it's only that your experimental setup doesn't work. (It happens.)

With luck, though, you find that you have gained some insight into how
things work, and then on the basis of that you start thinking of new
experiments to refine the understanding. Maybe you find out that the
embouchure or tongue _are_ important. Maybe you find out they're not.
Maybe you find out that those factors are too complicated to be able to
study reliably, so you keep it in mind but for now focus on the aspects
of the situation you _can_ observe well.

Worst-case scenario is you lead yourself up the garden path and observe
seeming patterns and relationships that are actually spurious. (It
happens.) But you don't know that's going to happen until you try, and
even if it does happen, ultimately that's a contribution -- you've
eliminated at least one way of getting it wrong.

> Since no two of us are alike, is it possible to make an artificial
> embouchure that would replicate a person's mouth/lip movement, or lack of it,
> sufficient to actually get usable data, and then apply it to trends? The
> experiment seems to suggest a lack of lip, tongue or internal mouth movement
> -- just air flow. I understand what the device does, I just wonder if
> humans can easily replicate what the machine can do.

The machine needs to approximate what humans are doing, not the other
way around ... :-)

The question is whether you can set it up to do that with sufficient
detail to be relevant. That doesn't necessarily need to cover all the
details of what human players are doing -- there are plenty of factors
that probably _aren't_ relevant.
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