 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: MRidgeP
Date: 2000-04-28 20:53
What are the advantages of having a reed with increased vibration speed?
How can you tell the relative vibration speed when you are playing.
How can you control your reed vibration speed?
I ask these questions because of Greg's reed profiler. It notes that it increases the reed vibration speed.
Any info would be appreciated.
matt
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Author: Frank
Date: 2000-04-28 21:30
I've never heard of such a thing. But then I'm not involved in manufacturing clarinet equipment. This is a shot in the dark, but what he may mean by that is you will produce more overtones, giving a fuller sound (or brighter sound, however you see it). If you're refering to Greg Smith, I'm sure you can email him and ask. Or you can wait until he responds to your message--he does occasionally take a look at this BBS.
Good luck finding out.
Frank
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Author: gRAHAM
Date: 2000-04-28 21:40
you can contact the people who make legere reeds. They are very friendly and respond fast!
I think there email is info@legere.com if not just go to legere.com
GRaham
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-04-28 23:25
The frequency of vibration determines pitch. The speed of vibration would only change becuase of amplitude, and since the reed is constantly changing its speed, it would be be changing the acceleration, too.
In other words, "speed of vibration" is a bit of a meaningless term.
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Author: Gregory Smith
Date: 2000-04-29 02:37
MRidgeP wrote:
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What are the advantages of having a reed with increased vibration speed?
How can you tell the relative vibration speed when you are playing.
How can you control your reed vibration speed?
I ask these questions because of Greg's reed profiler. It notes that it increases the reed vibration speed.
Any info would be appreciated.
matt
*************************************
To "quicken" the vibration or speed of vibration of a reed is simply refering to making a reed more vibrant, responsive and colorful - in the best sense of these words. A "quick" reed (or mouthpiece) is one that posesses these attributes. They are commonly expressed terms used for decades to describe these qualities.
Gregory Smith
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2000-04-29 14:52
Let me jump in with a little bit of my new found experience ... The tone or pitch is a function both of the frequency, but also the amplitude that the reed is vibrating. The "bightness" (and we do have to find another term) is a function of increasing the amplitude of the primary first harmonic (if there is one for the given note), 1/5 and 1/4 while relatively decreasing the number and amplitude of the "overtones" which are comprised of the 1/3's and 1/12's (actually it is a more complicated because there is a mathamatical relationship of the proportions of the the 1/3's and 1/12's to the harmonic and the 1/5) of the primary tone (which we describe as the "dark"). Greg is absolutely right that this is a function of the reed and the mouthpiece (add in a sprinkle of ligature, air volume, air flow, clarinet and embrochure of the player). Certain reeds, and/or mouthpieces will sound "brighter" not because the reed is vibrating faster but because the frequency and amplitude of the vibration is concentrated more in certain frequencies with greater amplitude in those frequencies. All of these parameters can be characterized - although there are still some relationships between groupings of frequencies that I am still investigating and trying to figure out. These frequency "signatures" may be useful in choosing the right hardware to achieve a given tonal quility "dark - or - bright" without the trial and expensive error process that we all go though now????
Hope this helps.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-04-29 16:30
L. Omar Henderson wrote:
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Let me jump in with a little bit of my new found experience ... The tone or pitch is a function both of the frequency, but also the amplitude that the reed is vibrating.
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I think you might mean timbre here. The pitch is only determined by the frequency or vibration - it's the definition of pitch. Tone & timbre are affected by many other parameters, including the many strong <b>even</b> overtones.
"Darkness" & "brightness" have been somewhat quantified by the definition of a clarinet's acoustic cutoff point. There's been discussion here and a number of references to Benade's "Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics".
The oral cavity serves as an acoustic filter itself, meaning that while an instrument/set-up may have a general proclivity towards a certain sound, you'll always find someone who can prove you wrong :^)
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2000-04-29 19:00
Good points Mark: but what comes out - pitch, tone, timbre, are quantifiable. You blow and a sound comes out, it is composed of many different frequencies and amplitudes of those frequencies. These are estimatable (and from what I have done, there is a definite difference between "dark" and "bright". The difference seems to be in the amount of haromic, 1/5, 1/4, and variable 1/3's and 1/12's and the relationship between the absolute amplitudes of each with the 1/5 tones. I have measured (al la Paul's concerns of reproducibility) a "good player" who is warmed up, etc. with different reeds and found a significant difference among reed varieties measuring the frequency and amplidude of the harmonic, 1/5, 1/4, and 1/3, 1/12 overtones. The subjective assessment of a pro player was that certain combinatiosof reed, and mouthpiece were either "bright" or "dark" and correlated well with the acoustic measuments of frequency and amplituide of the basic harmonic, 1/5, 1/4, 1/3-1/12 overtone series with few exceptions (data being analyzed). I have analyzed more than a few of the available reeds and find significant differences (excluding lot, reed to reed, and different lots) between the major manufacturers. What comes out of the horn is measurable and I think that I can provide you with a spectrum of what sounds "bright" and what sounds "dark" for a particular note on a given clarinet, using the same setup and player (only varying the reed).
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2000-05-04 18:31
Rick:
I have an experimental digital spectral analyzer (hardware and software hooked to fast PC) with sampling settings of 11, 22, and 44KHz with and averaging algorithm which is adjustable, and various levels of dB damping capabilities. By tweaking the settings I can get some rather nice peaks that give me frequency and amplitude peaks for the major tone, harmonic, 1/5, 1/4, various 1/3's and 1/12's of the tone. The richness or timbre of the tone seems to be a function of the number and amplitudes of the 1/3's and 1/12's but there are some interesting relationships of the 1/3's and 1/12's with the 1/5 and the harmonic which are associated with the perception that the tone is (and I hate these terms) "bright or dark". This research is ongoing but may yet yield something practical - e.g. evaluating reeds, instruments, mouthpieces and other hardware.
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2000-05-04 18:46
Rick:
Sorry, I did not really answer your question. The answer is proprietary however. With the help of a couple of math wizzes we have developed a number of mathamatical algorithms that compare and contrast various aspects of the digital spectrum for specific patterns. These patterns were deciphered from digital recordings made by some pro players playing on "bright" and "dark" instrument setups. After a lot of refining we applied them to various tone sequences that several pro players later subjectively identified as being more "bright" or more "dark" sounding to them. There was good correlation between our computer programs assessment and those of the pro players. Not perfect - but good - refining work is still in progress.
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