 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Koo Young Chung
Date: 2007-09-05 04:51
I'm just wondering if stronger,stiffer cane makes better reeds.
I'm not talking about the usual hard/soft reed debates.
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2007-09-05 05:29
The new Rico Reserve is said to be from the base of the cane where it is most dense and strongest. For me, these reeds don't "move well" in comparison to other reeds. The fibres seem too stiff for me, no matter how I try to work them down with a reed knife, I can't get what I want.
This is just personal preference and experience from 2 boxes of reeds- hardly a scientific study, but I think there is a difference.
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2007-09-05 11:59
(Disclaimer - I am owner of Arundo Donax Musicalis)
It depends on what you define as "stronger" and "stiffer". A physical description would have to include some quantitative measurements such as resistance to an applied force or the number of coss-links between bundles or number of vascular bundles per unit mass or silica content per mass. In the past I have lobbied for some sort of functional grading of reeds dependent on vibrational qualities (perhaps someday ??).
Of course vibrational qualities or physical descriptions are only one part of reed function which also depends on a myriad of other variables such as cut, shape and balance which help determine the vibrational qualities and many intangible variables that all contribute to reed function. Longevity of reed function may have a closer correlation to physical parameters but this too is a hard solution to model.
Many times the "quality" of reed cane is cited for performance characteristics but what this means in terms of physical and measurable characteristics eludes me!
L. Omar Henderson
www.doctorsprod.com
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Author: BobD
Date: 2007-09-05 12:53
Strength and Stiffness are two distinct properties of materials in general.
Bob Draznik
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Author: Aaron
Date: 2007-09-05 13:49
Mr. Blumberg-
What type of mouthpiece are you using with these Reserve reeds? And what strength?
Aaron M
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2007-09-05 16:06
I imagine that the key parameter for cane selectionis its specific stiffness defined as its elastic modulus divided by its density.
The reason I recommend this discriminator is that the restorative force tending to straighten the reed back out from a deflected shape is proportional to the elastic modulus, and the amount of mass that must be accelerated to straighten out the reed is proportional to its density. Therefore, the natural frequency of vibration is proportional to the (square root) of the specific stiffness. The rest of the determinate is geometrical describing the shape of the reed, and the elastic constraints of the player's lip at the base of the cantilevered reed.
Thus, we can't consider only the stiffness, but must also consider the density.
Bob Phillips
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2007-09-05 17:28
2 Mouthpieces
Gigliotti P Facing with Reserve #3 1/2 reed and Backun/Morales C Facing with same reed.
The Gigliotti is quite special as it was hand picked with Tony G. from several hundred and I haven't played another Gigliotti even close to it.
I do get a darker sound on the Backun and prefer that one. All of my recordings were done with the Gigliotti.
http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2007-09-05 17:54
Bob, the only question is how you define density - not weight/unit mass? My point is that you can indeed measure vibrational characteristics of the reed - sans the obvious variables of the players lips and pressure exerted. I suggested in another post in the dark mists of time that both back and forth and tangential movement could be used to grade reed vibrational movement on some arbitrary scale (could be a new scale or transmuted to our numerical or alphabetical scale) if the same force was equally applied to a number of individual reeds e.g. with a piezo electric clamp and CCD camera detection in two planes with computer algorithm computation.
L. Omar Henderson
www.doctorsprod.com
P.S. This is on one of the many shelves of wonderful ideas that are rejected by industry because better grading would hurt their bottom line.
Post Edited (2007-09-06 01:01)
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Author: CPW
Date: 2007-09-05 19:56
Since a reed is a plank of material, we would have to include the
ahem
Planck's constant
Against the windmills of my mind
The jousting pole splinters
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2007-09-06 16:50
Omar,
density: mass/volume
stiffness: stress/strain
Lessee if I can do the math:
stiffness units of dyne/cm^2
density units of gm/cm^3
stiffness/density units of dyne-cm/gm
dyne = gm-cm/sec^2
so stiffness/density has units of cm^2/sec^2
And, an untapered, cantilevered reed would have a natural frequency of vibration on the order of
2*pi * 3.5 * sqrt[ stiffness/density / (lay-length^2) ] Hz
And, you're right in that a single reed may have more than just cantilever (Diving Board) motion while being played. I've heard of a torsional mode where first one edge and then the other bangs against the mouthpiece (or nearly). So more elastic properties may be involved.
OTH: instead of grading reeds by some arbitrary number, it would be interesting to clamp and "pluck" them for grading --and to then box them according to resonant frequency.
Bob Phillips
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2007-09-06 17:44
Bob, my assumption is that mass of the reed has some/little to do with vibrational qualities because reeds of the same mass may/will have different structural qualities (number and interrelationship of vascular bundles and bonded carbohydrate crosslinking) so the math gets much more weird and complex to define the density component.
L. Omar Henderson
www.doctorsprod.com
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Author: CPW
Date: 2007-09-08 13:49
So, if we follow Bob's formula, the reed would have a
Pluck, not Planck, constant.
From a box of cane
I pluck a reed
The vibrational constant
I must obtain
To pluck the reed
It is energy I need
A dyne-centimeter
A joule indeed
The physics makes
my brain implode
Just put the sucker on the horn
and....blow.
Against the windmills of my mind
The jousting pole splinters
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