 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: tww
Date: 2003-04-24 22:44
When I first learned saxophone, my mentor told me that the airflow difference between clarinet and sax is that on sax you blow warm air through the instrument and on clarinet you blow cold air through the instrument. I didn't really heed this at the time, but I've recently tried playing clarinet while thinking of blowing very cold air (rather than warm air as if saying "hoh"). It seems to have a beneficial effect.
Any comments on the validity of this cold air mindset?
- tww
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Author: javier garcia m
Date: 2003-04-24 23:01
I don't understand such difference between "cold" and "warm" air. Air from the lungs has been "warmed" by the heat exchange produced there. I cannot imagine how may you change its temperature.
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Author: Ralph G
Date: 2003-04-24 23:13
It's a drag hooking up my compressor, heat exchanger and refrigerant reservoir to my clarinet every time I play it, but you do what you have to. :-)
I've never heard of this. Not even sure how to do it without the above-mentioned apparatus.
________________
Artistic talent is a gift from God and whoever discovers it in himself has a certain obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it.
- Pope John Paul II
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Author: funkymunky
Date: 2003-04-24 23:33
I guess what he means is like when you blow with your lips closed on your hand it feels cold, while if you "hah" on your hand it feels warm. I have never thought of it that way but it is similar to the embroucher change between sax and clarinet. Playing sax you feel like your useing the lower lungs and clarinet is useing your upper lungs, I guess.
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Author: anne
Date: 2003-04-25 00:38
It's not really about the temperature of the air. It's more about the position your throat is in to create the different feel of the air flow. When you are blowing cold air, your throat is usually closed off...creating a small, thin sound. When you're blowing warm air, your throat has to be more open (in a "hah" position, or more preferably in an "eee" position). This creates a warm, open sound. But....that's just my opinion. I guess things work differently for everyone!
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Author: Webby
Date: 2003-04-25 01:43
tww,
By the looks of your IP number, I'd say we're from the same town, and I heard this one, too (although I can't remember who said it to me).
I asked a professor about it, and she told me that fast air is inherently cool, and as a general thing I'd say both airstreams should be fast. I think the big difference is air direction---mostly down vs. somewhat down and somewhat forward.
It doesn't look like you've got an e-mail address available (or maybe I'm doing something wrong). If you could write me and let me know who told you this, I'd be curious if it was someone we have in common
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Author: Heidi
Date: 2003-04-25 03:23
That's wierd....this is how I learned the difference in my methods class.
Yes, cool the temperature difference is mostly about air speed. When you put your hand in front of your mouth and blow fast air, the temperature is cool...when you blow slower air (with a 'ha' feel) it's warmer.
The warmer air opens up your throat and makes it easier to play the lower notes on saxophone, which being a conical bored instrument is harder to do generally. Personally, I find it really hard to go from clarinet to saxophone because my embouchure is tighter for one, and my air speed is way wrong. Sax players generally have an easier time switching to clarinet because it's easier to get the faster air column..at least in my opinion, I could be totally wrong. I've only been a doubler for a short time.
Clarinet = faster air ="cold" air
Saxophone= slower air = "warm" air
hope that helps!
Heidi
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Author: Ray
Date: 2003-04-25 19:22
This cold air/warm air thing is just another way to say concentrated/fast air stream versus broad/slow air stream from your mouth into your mouthpiece.
Clarinetists generally use a concentrated/fast/cold air stream which is simply achieved by maintaining a high tongue position in the back of your mouth. Say the word KEY and hold your tongue in that position. Observe that the back of your tongue is arched upward and touches your back teeth. This creates a small opening through which your air will be speeded up. (This is the Bernoulli effect.) The front of your tongue curves naturally downward into a position for correct tonguing.
You should strive to keep your tongue in this position.
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Author: Henry
Date: 2003-04-25 19:51
There is something physically real about the "warm vs. cold air" concept. When two blown airstreams, at the same overall volumetric flow rate, are impinging on your hand, the narrow, high-speed stream will cause more local evaporation of skin moisture (and therefore more skin cooling) than the broader, low-velocity stream, even though the temperature of the two impinging air streams would be the same (i.e., body temperature), if measured by, say, a thermocouple. It is simply an example of the "wind-chill" factor.
Just my 0.02$ worth.
Henry
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2003-04-25 19:55
Henry wrote:
> There is something physically real about the "warm vs. cold
> air" concept.
And metaphors have been valuable as teaching examples from time immemorial.
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Author: Benni
Date: 2003-04-26 00:02
Cold air on clarinet and warm air on sax is exactly what my teacher taught me from the beginning!
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2003-04-26 02:09
I don't think it has anythiing to do with chill factor, which is forced evaporation.
If I blow a thin stream of fast air against my hand my hand is cold. But if I blow an even faster FAT stream of air it is warm. Chill factor would suggest that the latter would be even colder.
I think the cold air phenomenon is more to do with the change of pressure of the air after it hits the hand. If there is high air pressure in the lungs (thanks to the abdominal and intercostal muscles) then the airstream starts with higher pressure.
"Charles' Law": "Temperature (in a gas) is proportional to pressure"
So as this high pressure reduces as the air hits the hand, cooling occurs.
I suggests that blowing cold air is just an image that assists some people to blow harder, and yes, a clarinet does require more air pressure than a sax, particularly a larger sax.
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Author: Henry
Date: 2003-04-26 02:48
"Charles' Law" is part of the ideal gas law PV=nRT, which is a relationship between pressure (P), volume (V), temperature (T) and the number of moles n (i.e., the "amount" of gas). R is a constant. This law applies only AT EQUILIBRIUM. It does not imply that the temperature of a given amount of gas goes up as the pressure is slowly increased but rather that the volume goes down. Gordon may be thinking of the cooling that accompanies the VERY RAPID expansion of a gas, say, through the nozzle of a fire extinguisher. But that is far from an equilibrium situation and has nothing to do with Charles' (or the ideal gas) law. In fact, I don't think that the air flow in clarinet playing is fast enough to produce any measurable temperature drop due to expansion. I still believe that the phenomenon we are talking about is a manifestation of "wind chill" due to evaporation of skin moisture.
I wonder if Gordon has actually carried out the experiment described in his second paragraph in a quantitative way.
Henry
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2003-04-26 04:16
You say "only at equilibrium". What does that mean? In all the experiments I ever did there were forced changes of one of the three variables, P,V or T, resulting in changes to one or both of the other parameters. How does that constitutte "equilibrium". There is no mention of "equilibrium" at
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/kinetic/idegas.html
"It does not imply that the temperature of a given amount of gas goes up as the pressure is slowly increased but rather that the volume goes down."
OK, not only Charles' Law is operaring. There are changes to all three parameters, suddenly. If I block the end of my bicycle pump, and quickly compress the air within, the pressure increases, the volume decreases AND the temperature rises. T is proportional to PV.
Likewise the air, somewhat and briefly contained within the airstream that hits my hand.... That fraction of a second between the air exiting my lips and the air hitting my hand, the pressure decreases, the volume decreases so does the temperature.
"Gordon may be thinking of the cooling that accompanies the VERY RAPID expansion of a gas, say, through the nozzle of a fire extinguisher. But that is far from an equilibrium situation and has nothing to do with Charles' (or the ideal gas) law"
From my understanding it has a lot to do with it. Of course with examples where LIQUIDS under pressure evaporate when released there is a greater factor involved, latent heat of vaporization involved.
I have done another ewxperiment blowing cold and wrm air onto my hand while my hand is in a suirgical glove. I still reel a temperature change. Am I not right in saying that while my moist skin is covered with a surgical glove there is no evaportaion from the hand surface, therefore no wind chill factor?
"I wonder if Gordon has actually carried out the experiment described in his second paragraph in a quantitative way."
My experiment has very obvious results that do not need quantifying. I blow with a fmid-range flute embouchure, a very small flow of high speed air, and then with my mouth half open, exhaling a lungful of air at considerably higher speed in a fraction of a second. The former is cold; the latter warm.
Perhaps there can be no forced evaporation with a fat mass of air of 100% humidity
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Author: BobD
Date: 2003-04-26 12:06
Perhaps the faster air speed is why we get condensation in the mouthpiece and barrel but not further down the horn(except by drainage).
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Author: Henry
Date: 2003-04-26 14:46
Gordon, I always enjoy your posts. They make one think and, perhaps, reconsider.
What I meant with "equilibrium" is that, for the ideal gas law (or any law of thermodynamics) to apply, any change to the system must be done "reversibly", i.e., in infinitesimal steps, from one equilibrium state to another, so that the process can be exactly retraced back to the starting point. Very rapid expansion or compression is not covered by the ideal gas law but is governed by the field of "irreversible thermodynamics", of which my ready knowledge is admittedly rather limited.
Your experiment with the surgical glove doesn't convince me. As the glove material is pushed into the skin by the airstream, heat conduction away from the skin may increase. Plus there may be a tactile effect.
Your observation that your skin felt warmer with the broader air stream than with the narrower one is of course exactly what this whole discussion was about. To me it only means that the local air velocity in the former case was smaller than in the former, in spite of your assertion that you "blew" much harder. If the diameter of the air streams differed by a factor of ten, you would have had to blow at a volumetric flow rate that was at least 100 times faster. I doubt that you actually did that, although it may have felt that way!
We'll probably not come to an agreement on this and that's OK. But I assume that you DO accept the wind-chill effect (in a metereological sense) as being due to differences in the rate of skin moisture evaporation. I still think that this is the easiest way to think of the problem at hand. But who knows?
Henry
Post Edited (2003-04-26 17:54)
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2003-04-26 16:52
Sorry about all the typos.
Yes, I do accept them wind chill effect being a result of what you say. Presumably it also has something to do with the constant removal of an insulating, warmed layer of air around the warm object, hence increasing conduction from the warm object to the surrounding air.
Regarding the ideal gas law, I have looked up many sites on the topic and can find only statements about how it can be used with confidence, and many experiments not unlike the pump one I gave, for students. I could find no mention of "infinitesimal steps" or "irreversible thermodynamics". These terms seem to be used more for chemical reactions. So I guess we have to agree to differ here. I certainly know little of "irreversible thermodynamics", but I consider my pump experiment completely reversible, as long as it is not left to lose heat to the surroundings before being reversed.
Further to the glove experiment, and blowing into the hand, I now offer the following:
Hoping to get rid chill effects due to forced evaporation, I blew a small, fast, airstream at a my (dry) thermometer - 28.5 degrees C. Then I blew a large volume of low pressure air as described in my previous post. - 30 degrees C. Hmmm.
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Author: Henry
Date: 2003-04-26 16:57
Gordon. I edited my previous post slightly just as your were posting your reply. But I don't know if it will make any difference to you. I enjoyed the exchange of ideas!
Henry
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Author: Keil
Date: 2003-04-26 19:15
i think it has a lot to do with the speed of the air as oppose to the temperature itself... the clarinet do to resistance requires faster air where as the saxophone, having less resistance, requires a slower air stream persay which in turns feels warm
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