 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: HannahLynnLove
Date: 2011-03-30 03:37
Hello. For the past few days I have been trying to figure out the answers to these questions I need to have answered for my Long Term Science Project about the clarinet, but I have no luck. Since I know the people on here are professionals and are very intelligible of their instrument, I figured I'd go here for some advice and help.
If you can, PLEASE give sources (.edu only or ProQuest, but I've already tried ProQuest and couldn't find a thing) OR at least something that I can use to find reliable sources for (NO wikipedia :()
Here are the questions:
• What tools can I use to measure tone? How do I use it?
• What can I use to change the temperature of my instrument?
• How long does it take for plastic to change temperature?
• How much temperature difference can a plastic clarinet have before it cracks? (I have a wooden one but I knew it would crack with my project, but I don't know if plastics can crack or not or if it's bad if it has a major temperature difference in a short amount of time)
• How much/what type of plastic is a clarinet made out of?
I do not have any clue what kind of plastic clarinet I have. We got it at the Pawn Shop 4 years ago (works very well despite that fact) But the serial number is E07555. From what I've researched, it's possibly a Vito Clarinet.
And my project is asking the question "How does the temperature of a clarinet affect it's tone and overall quality?" in case it would help.
PS. I *do* have a private instructor, but I'm pretty sure we have to use an online source. I will ask my science teacher tomorrow about it.
Thanks in advance, and please post as soon as possible!
Hannah
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Author: Paul Miller
Date: 2011-03-30 09:04
Wow, that's ambitious. I have a few ideas and will post in detail tomorrow afternoon...
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Author: Noqu
Date: 2011-03-30 11:04
Some thoughts that may help you on your research project:
When you say "tone", you probably mean "pitch". Temperature mainly affects the clarinet's pitch, i.e. the frequency of the sound wave it generates. A cold clarinet will sound flat (lower frequency), a warm clarinet sharp (higher frequency).
More precisely, it is actually the temperature of the air column within the clarinet that makes the frequency change (note that warm air has a lower density).
Hence, the questions you ask are mainly about the heat transfer from the (body-warm) air you blow into the clarinet to the (cold) clarinet body.
Heat transfer, temperature gradients and thermal conductivity are (unfortunately rather complex) issues well described in physics text books.
You can use a tuner to measure pitch. If you have a computer and a microphone, there are free programs available that work as a tuner (just google for it, there are plenty). By adding a sensitive thermometer, you could actually experiment with your (plastic) clarinet at different temperatures.
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2011-03-30 17:17
If you're actually interested in tone rather than pitch, you could try a spectrogram, spectograph, and/or oscilloscope. However, tone will probably be affected to a much greater degree by how you play than by temperature.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2011-03-30 21:56
One not-so-easy thing you could do to measure "tone" is to compute the spectrum of the noise your clarinet is making.
A spectrum is a picture of how the sound energy is spread across the frequencies of vibration.
One tool you might use to obtain a sound spectrum is the free program, Audacity.
<http://audacity.sourceforge.net/>
If you go after Audacity, keep your eyes open because you might get stuff that you don't want.
You need to record the sound you want to analyze and save it in a file. Then, you open it in Audacity, mark off what you want to examine and evoke the spectrum analyzer from "Analyze" in the Audacity menu.
Good luck with your project.
Bob Phillips
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Author: Bassie
Date: 2011-03-31 07:20
Wow, those are some good questions.
1. I'm not sure there is a tool to measure tone because 'tone' is subjective. But you can measure an oscilloscope trace and take a spectrum with various tools (many on a PC or even i-thingy). Blow harder, you'll get more harmonics. This is standard physicsy stuff.
2. If you still want to play it? An electric blanket? Or a conditioned room. Or measure it as soon as it comes out of the oven/fridge.
3. Changing temperature: well, it'd help to know the plastic. But you can measure it, I guess: stick thermocouples all the way along a joint, wrap it up well and heat one end. Plot the results, there's some maths tells you what's expected to happen. Maybe you could blow hot air through and measure the surface temperature as a function of time.
4. Cracking is caused by 'thermal shock', i.e. rate of change of temperature. Fast changes cause temperature gradients cause stress gradients cause cracks. But susceptibility to cracking is called 'brittleness'. The plastic will be brittle at low temperature and tough at high temperature. For a plastic there's often a Glass Transition Temperature at which the change is rapid. There's various ways of measuring this: change in thermal expansion with temperature, or change in heat capacity with temperature (DSC/DTA). This is all pretty standard materials sciencey stuff, but beware the rabbithole gets deep rather quickly!
5. What type of plastic? There are materials-sciency rules of thumb for identifying plastics (some destructive!). Like: can you scratch it with a thumbnail? (no.) Does it burn, or melt? (!) But it's generally quite tricky, not just a matter of sticking it in an SEM. Ask the manufacturer, they might be willing to help out a student, and there are points to be earned for using your initiative in this way. (A real engineer will ask the manufacturer AND perform the measurement and see if the answers are the same!)
You should be able to find a load of backround reading on these topics on Google and in the Library. And remember that real published paper books still count for more in this game. (They're easier to reference, for starters.)
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Author: Evans
Date: 2011-04-01 15:24
Resonite is a rather popular plastic for clarinets.
Evan B. Stanfill
1971 Noblet 45
Vandoran V360 Mouthpiece
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