 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Suzanne
Date: 2001-12-15 22:26
When it is dry like it is in the winter, does it make your reeds softer? Mine all seem to be spready and buzzy, except for the ones that used to be too hard. I'm just curious about this. Or is it just that Vandoren is making them softer???
HOHOHO
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Author: Kristin
Date: 2001-12-16 04:04
Ask santa for a cigar humidifier and a rubbermaid container for your reeds! ( ;
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Author: Kim
Date: 2001-12-16 17:57
The lack of moisture in the air during wintertime causes not only a change in reed response (the thinness that you describe) but a change in how sound travels acoustically. The more moisture in the air, the fuller the sound and the better the projection. In dryer conditions, the opposite occurs. This is true for any instrument, but the fact that our reeds are also affected by humidity levels makes it a more difficult (and noticable!) problem. Think about how a wood door will sometimes swell up and won't always close right during the summer. Sidewalks also do this (expand and shrink), which is what causes them to crack. The reed will actually physically shrink and expand depending on the amount of humidity in the air. So save those thin reeds that you have now for the summer. They'll be perfect!
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2001-12-16 18:10
Kim,
Just for minute, think about something:
Where do your reeds spend all their time while you're playing? In your mouth, where it's just about 100% humidity and temperature controlled all the time. The ambient humidity makes just about no difference to your reeds while you're playing - storage is a different matter, however.
As to the rest of your observations - I've never heard the "The more moisture in the air, the fuller the sound and the better the projection", and thin reeds are better in summer. Perhaps they're accurate, but they'd need a lot more support before I'd consider them gospel.
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Author: Suzanne
Date: 2001-12-16 22:50
I don't want to start an argument or anything, but by my **expericence**, the reed is drying up IN MY stupid MOUTH even while I'm playing the thing, it's so dry here, along with my poor peeling lips and scaly skin. The inside of my MOUTH is drying up too! I keep a bottle of drinking H20 and reed H2O handy, and the reed is temporarily better after my mouth is hydrated and the reed is re-dipped, then five minutes later it's back to kazoo land. So, experientially at least, the humidity IS making a difference while I am playing. (I claim no gospel knowledge, only empirical evidence.) It wasn't like this during the summer or even last month. This is why I asked the question.
PS I do store my reeds in a ziploc bag with a cigar humidifier. I have a feeling that that is why they are fine for the first five minutes, before they get dried out.
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Author: Kim
Date: 2001-12-17 00:57
Mark,
Well, I've read a bit about the acoustics of sound, and moisture in the air serves as a conductor of the sound, making it more live. It's been a while, so I don't remember all of the more scientific specifics, but if you're interested, I'd suggest that you'd do some research on it. It's pretty interesting.
As for the thinning out of reeds in the wintertime, if that's never happened to you, you'll have to tell us all what your secret is! I'm definitely with Suzanne as far as having experienced the reed drying out while being played on. Perhaps you're one of the lucky ones that lives somewhere south where there's always a reasonable amount of humidity in the air?.
I used to keep track of humidity levels in the air to find out when my reeds were going to get especially crazy and found that when the humidity level in the air dropped below the 30/35% range was when I'd begin having problems. 20% range was really bad and the teens was just awful.
And as for the shrinking/expanding thing, it's just a general thing that occurs in nature. Even the human body shrinks and expands according to humidity/temperature. More than one jeweler has told me that people frequently have their ring sizes adjusted in the summer and wintertime because hands frequently swell up more than one ring size in the summer and shrink back in the winter (which is especially interesting, given people's tendency to put on weight in the winter and lose weight in the summer).
Anyway, I think that the use of humidifiers, plastic bags, etc., in the winter is our attempt to resist what mother nature has planned for us (reed hell in the winter!). I certainly do not believe that I have all of the mysteries in reeds figured out. I do hope that this further clarification helps.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2001-12-17 02:16
Kim wrote:
>
> Well, I've read a bit about the acoustics of sound, and
> moisture in the air serves as a conductor of the sound, making
> it more live.
Used to work on acoustical problems for a living ... I've done a bit of studying in acoustics. That's why I'd like you to quantify what you're saying. I've not come across that before in my previous years of study. Now, I studied and worked in acoustics 25 years ago and used the practical applications to avoid being torpedoed, to locate aircraft and other ships at long distances without radar and to predict machinery failure, so perhaps there's something new that's come up besides the affecting of the local speed of sound. Sound carrying on the wind, reflected, refracted, tunneling in temperature inversions, things like that I know about. Humidity's effect on the sound I don't. Please put me on the right track - it's not in my (albeit too few) reference books here.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2001-12-17 03:53
Yes, we've gone over that in another posting (the helium one) - but it affects the speed of sound, not the overall spectra, at least in those equations. I'm looking for what humidity does relative to frequency - that's what would cause a shift in "presence".
I'm not denying the effect - I haven't heard of the effect.
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Author: Kim
Date: 2001-12-17 14:24
Mark,
I'm not equipped with enough scientific knowledge to get into a discussion of the more technical, scientific aspects, nor to provide equations. My understanding of acoustics is limited to basic concepts, but not the formulas behind them. It just seems (to me) to be common sense that the presence of (or lack of) humidity which creates differences in sound speed is going to translate into a difference in one's perception of fullness, volume, etc., especially since this is something that I (and other professional musicians that I've spoken with) have noticed. I think that this subject is touched on by the website that GBK posted, which mentions how divers cannot detect the direction that the sound is coming from, as it reaches both ears at the same time. That is definitely an example of how perception of sound is affected by the presence of water. Since you have a more scientific background, I'm sure that you're more equipped to research this than those of us that simply have a music background. If this is something that you cannot hear, I don't know what else that I can say to you about this topic.
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Author: Emms
Date: 2001-12-17 21:52
I think reverberation may have something to do with this. In a hall or large room, sound reaches the listener by many paths, some reflected off walls or ceilings. Reverberation is when the sound persists at the listener for some time after it was made due to this reflection. A short reverberation time makes a room sound 'dead', but too long a time causes confusion to the ears. If the speed of sound is increased by humidity, there would be more reflection and more reverberation, making the sound more 'alive' to the listener.
As for reeds becoming thinner in winter, the reed is so thin,any shrinkage would be negligible, and only if it was permanently in the cold. Once in the mouth, it would rehydrate and warm up.
Are you sure your mouth isn't becoming drier. People often don't drink enough in winter as they don't feel the physical thirst they do in summer.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2001-12-17 23:02
Emms wrote:
> If the speed of sound is increased by humidity,
> there would be more reflection and more reverberation, making
> the sound more 'alive' to the listener.
The effect of humidity on the speed of sound is minimal; changes due to temperature or pressure far outweigh the changes due to humidity.
The speed of sound difference wouldn't change the amount of reflections, but would (very subtly) change the time associated with the reverberations, but looking at the formula it appears for most halls to be significantly less than the change of 1 seat position.
But a fair thought, even if I don't think that it's the factor here.
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Author: Suzanne
Date: 2001-12-18 00:40
Yes, I realized that response was directed toward Kim, but the issue is, I still am having the problem, regardless of what physics says, and my supposed-to-be-humid mouth isn't so humid. I'm drinking a lot (WATER, folks, don't get creative here) when I practice, but the reeds are still strange. Whatever the scientific research says, I have no idea, but I do know what I am experiencing, and that is what I want to fix.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2001-12-18 01:09
Suzanne,
What I was pointing out was the problem is physiological - in dry weather we physically change. You need to stay well hydrated in the dry (winter) weather.
Your embouchure itself changes with the weather since your oral tissues respond to humidity. You'll have to adapt - it may (probably will) require you to experiment a half strength up and down from whatever your "summer" strength is.
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Author: Suzanne
Date: 2001-12-18 21:46
Well, whatever the cause... it seems to be not me, and not Vandoren (though we do like to blame them lots, don't we?)...
Ciao
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Author: David Pegel
Date: 2001-12-19 01:32
I know what you mean, Suzanne.
But maybe it's not humidity at all, because in Nashville, Tennessee, down here it's NEVER very dry. But I still get that occasional problem. and on the occasion where it IS dry, I can still either get one sound or the other. Neither seems to have any correlation with the other, humidity-wise or not.
Would that make sense? It doesn't to me. Maybe it IS Vandoren's fault!! But I odn't want to draw any conclusions... I'm still reed-hunting!! Not to mention that the weather down south here is always out of it anyway!
Maybe it's just God's way of telling you to take a few weeks off! ;P
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