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Re: Ligatures, Clamps and Physics

Author: Selmer Buff
Date: 2023-07-03 23:52

Your initial premise is false. Cutting a poorly secured board with a saw is a resonate system without feedback. It is 'open-loop'. It acts like a taunt string or a bell and vibrates when you smack it.

A clarinet reed on a clarinet, et al, is a closed loop system. There is feedback from the acoustic wave developed in the cylinder. When the reed starts to move, a pressure wave propogates down the tube that bounces off the opening (because of the sudden impedance change) and returns to the reed, reinforcing its movement at a particular frequency. If you were to simply clamp a reed in a vise and blow on it, it wouldn't do much of anything without the feedback.

Also, when a reed moves in one direction, the mouthpiece moves in the opposite direction. The amount of movement by either, is dependent on the force applied and the masses of the two pieces in motion. Newton's third law: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. How well the reed, ligature, and mouthpiece are coupled controls this interaction. This system is not very linear with many second-order effects, so a simple explanation is impossible.

This simplifies the solution greatly: find your sound and enjoy.

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