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Re: Clarinet reed microscopy

Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2019-07-15 12:52

Hi,

Thanks so much for all of your encouraging responses. It's great to think that my microscope might be useful for the clarinet community. It's really exciting to know that there are other specialists and microscopists out there too. I reckon we could have some fun if we work together.

Bob - it sounds as though you have done a lot of this before, but perhaps the results were industry secrets. Is that right? Maybe I could do the public version in a small way, if your work is very secret, very advanced, and not to be shared online?

Clarnibase, your setup sounds great, and very much like mine. That's brilliant that there are two of us the same here. It's always better with a group working together. :-)

For the technical detail, a description of my setup for a general audience is given in the video below (Please do laugh at my accent btw. The funding body asked me to make the videos as a condition of my funding for the microscope objectives. Even I still laugh at the videos.) :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IGpcFpEbxM

The full detail is here of the setup is here:

http://chlorophyllosophyimages.blogspot.com/2017/12/focus-stacking-setup.html

The equipment that I use is a Canon 5d MkII camera, a Olympus Zuiko 200mm prime lens and a series of Mitutoyo microscope objectives (x5, x10, x20, x50). I have a Canon MP-E lens for bigger specimens and an Olympus Zuiko 2:1 lens for even bigger ones.

My area of special interest is gametophyte ferns, but I reckon I could have a go at clarinet reeds too and see how it goes. The funding that paid for the microscope objectives was for plant science research, and I'm pretty certain that clarinet reeds count as applied plant science research.

I can't start on it quite immediately because my kitchen wall is being demolished this week, and my microscope is just outside the kitchen door, but hopefully next week (assuming that the house is still standing.) :-)

I really like the idea of first photographing the thin tip of the different strengths of one brand of reed. I will aim for that first. I have several strengths of classic vandoren reed, so I am well set up for that.

The idea of photographing new reeds over several initial wet-dry cycles sounds great too. Now that I am learning grade 3 I am realising that reeds are really really important for getting the right sound and managing the tricky technical bits, so I will be very interested to learn about the importance of reed handling and breaking in. I will put that down for experiment number 2.

I wonder if experiment number 3 might be to look at the difference between the tip of the one reed from the box that works perfectly and the other that doesn't work at all? It seems to me that one is always just too hard, but I may be quite wrong.

Experiment number 4 in my head is to figure out what I need to do to make the non-working reed work, and whether the photos can help with that.

Yay!

Sunny

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Clarinet reed microscopy new

SunnyDaze

2019-07-15 01:47