Author: Phil Freihofner
Date: 2007-02-01 06:08
I'm not sure the 1'' to 1mm ratio is useful. One can have a working reed at many lengths, depending on the gouge, opening, cut, etc. English horns and d'amore's are longer and have longer reeds. But a bassoon is way longer than an oboe and has a shorter reed, albeit much fatter.
I think it's good to try and visualize what is going on. I've put forth a lot of theories (elsewhere, mostly) and had them shot down repeatedly. But each time, I learned something useful.
One thing to think about, in terms of low and high notes: when the lips press on a section of the reed, that section will vibrate LESS than the sections that remain uncovered. The lips have a dampening effect. Thus when we move down (towards the bell) on the reed, we free up the tip, and suppress motion of the back. This often helps with high notes.
And the opposite: when we move to the tip, we free up the back, and the tone gets darker and low notes speak more easily.
Thus, I think your visualization needs to be modified. The tip vibrations seem to have more to do with the higher partials, and the back vibrations seem to have more to do with the lower partials. But the exact nature of the correspondence is not at all clear to me.
It could have to do with resonance in the reed itself (the closer the resonance is to the tip, the more the high partials speak, like bowing a violin near the bridge) or it could have to do with how abruptly the reed opens and closes (the more abruptly the reed swings from open to close and vice versa, the greater the energy of the high partials).
I think we are going to be working on figuring this out for a while, yet.
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