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Re: Mouthpiece Shortening Experiment

Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2006-03-30 14:27

Dan, Don,

You are correct, this is PhD research stuff; and I wish we could get a team of music and engineering profs together somewhere to actuall do the needed work.

The idea that a high reed natural frequency is entirely correct. When two vibrating systems are coupled together and excited, they will ultimately come to synchronism. In our case, the reed and the clarinet's air column will vibrate at the same frequency and produce the desired note.

BUT, it takes a while for the two systems to come together. The number of reed cycles required to stabilize depends upon the natural damping of the reed and THE NUMBER OF ITS VIBRATION CYCLES. A stiffer reed gets through this transient quicker than a softer reed.

That's why a stiff reed helps get altissimo notes started better than a soft reed.

One of our recent threads refrenced a study that correlates the reed's torsioinal vibrations (one corner of the reed hits the mouthpiece while the other corner is pulling away). The work suggests that this twisting vibration in the proper proportion to the "flapping" vibration determines the quality (harmonic content) of the player's tone. NOW, as a failed student of acoustics (graduate school courses) that is mystified by the way a single reed works, I would have never guessed that a reed does anything but flap (if its balanced).

SO, lets recruit a forward-looking college to explore this problem.

Bob Phillips

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