 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: YCL-450
Date: 2006-04-09 19:59
How much effect does reed strength have on tone? Does a stronger reed produce better tone?
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Author: pmgoff78
Date: 2006-04-09 20:25
In my opinion....stronger does not equal better. I played on a 2.5 in High School and currently play for my High School Director in a community band. Once he commented that he so appreciated hearing that sound he had grown accustomed to (meaning me and my standmate who also went to my High School.) Neither one of us plays on the setup we used in school. With the winds of change will go your setup. It will never lay in stone. Ever.
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Author: David Peacham
Date: 2006-04-09 21:18
"Does a stronger reed produce better tone?"
No, the best tone comes from the correct strength. Otherwise we'd all be on #5.
A useful rule of thumb is to play the strongest reed you can manage without your tone becoming muffled. But bear in mind that different mouthpieces require different reeds. Also, there is little consistency between the numberings used for different designs of reed, even within the same manufacturer.
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If there are so many people on this board unwilling or unable to have a civil and balanced discussion about important issues, then I shan't bother to post here any more.
To the great relief of many of you, no doubt.
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Author: Tony Beck
Date: 2006-04-09 22:06
One thing I have noticed is that reeds too soft for a givin mouthpiece tend to have intonation problems. Going from a 2.5 to 3.5 on my Vandoren M-15 fixed a lot of tuning bugs, and the weak throat Eb (all 4 fingerings!).
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Author: Cuisleannach
Date: 2006-04-09 22:48
A lot depends on the mouthpiece. I play on a 5 (vandoren V-12) or R-S (Zonda), but I have a pretty close mouthpiece. I find that I tend to do better with tonguing with a harder reed, and I'm able to get a nice range of dynamics. The trouble with harder reeds is that playing soft is very difficult, especially as the clarinet is rightly famous for its ability to play subtones.
Here's a test that will tell you about the strength of your reed with respect to the strength of your embouchure and the lay of your mouthpiece.
1. Set your embouchure....NO pinching, NO chewing
2. Play the loudest note you can in the clarion range (a above the staff, throat range (bottom line e) and chalameau (low g) WITHOUT DROPPING YOUR JAW). If the reed closes up it's too soft for you.
3. Play the same notes as soft as you can WITHOUT BITING. If you can't get a non-fuzzy, full voiced ppp, the reed is too hard.
-Randy
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2006-04-10 15:21
A "harder" reed will get through start-up transients quicker than a soft reed. That is, the harder reed will have a higher natural frequency of vibration.
Imagine the reed clamped to the edge of a table while you pluck the tip --like a miniature diving board. The harder reed will vibrate faster than the softer reed.
Now, consider the clarinet silently awaiting you to form a note. The reed has to start vibrating, get the air column excited and fall in-step with the note being played. The harder, faster reed gets through this transient quicker than the softer, slower reed.
You will see this transient, coupled vibration response when you tongue a note, and when you change the air column length by fingering a new note. The higher the pitch you are playing, the more the speed-of-response of the reed is challenged. That's why hard reeds help you play in the altissimo register.
Reed strength iaffects the pitch of the instrument. To some extent, the reed and the air column try to "do their own thing." The reed wants to vibrate at its natural frequency, and the air column wants to vibrate at the frequency of the fingered note. These two vibrations are both present in the sound you make, but the player forces them into coincidence (or you squeak). The coupled vibration frequency is somewhere between that of the air column and the reed. Raising the reed's natural frequency raises the combined pitch --a small effect.
Please note that, while this is a decent qualitative description of what's going on, I can't "do the math" to get concrete results. That's why we want to see a PhD program focused on this issue --probably with a wind prof and the engineering school at a first class university.
Note, also that your lip pressure acts on the reed to change it vibration characteristics. This all adds to the complexity of the system that includes your involved and adjacent body parts as well as the reed, mouthpiece and the whole clarinet.
Bob Phillips
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Author: Cuisleannach
Date: 2006-04-11 03:54
>
> Please note that, while this is a decent qualitative
> description of what's going on, I can't "do the math" to get
> concrete results. That's why we want to see a PhD program
> focused on this issue --probably with a wind prof and the
> engineering school at a first class university.
>
> Note, also that your lip pressure acts on the reed to change it
> vibration characteristics. This all adds to the complexity of
> the system that includes your involved and adjacent body parts
> as well as the reed, mouthpiece and the whole clarinet.
>
I've seen some interesting things coming out of i think the university of NSW in Sydney (if only I could go and see for myself). I've been interested in the same thing....I must've worn out three or four copies of Benade's Musical Acoustics book, and I'm considering trying to find a school where I could look at the theoretical physics of musical instruments. I currently work as an applied mathematician doing biomechanics work, but was a musician before. Even in my field there's some conventional wisdom that just ain't so wise...there's gotta be some fun stuff to discover with instrument design.
-Randy
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2006-04-11 16:25
Randy,
Go for it. I hereby volunteer to sit on your dissertation committee --if your university will have me.
Biomechanics is a very, very cool profession --except for the arrogance of the MDs (Sorry, Alseg). I sat in the BioMech offices in grad school and Berkeley and found much of their work really worthwhile. Suturing to avoid biaxial stresses that would "pucker" the flesh and form scars. Forming libraries of kinematic gait data, prosthetics, ... there is so much to do. Maybe stem cell "prostheses" engineered.
I once tried to get a quantitative (say, MS level) study of clarinet "blow out" started at a college where the clarinet prof suggested that I toss my "blown-out" Buffet. I believe that trying to find a rationalization (warping, material degradation, ...) for "blow out" was offensive to them.
MS math, engineering, music students. PhD candidates, lets get going on this!
Bob Phillips
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Author: Cuisleannach
Date: 2006-04-11 18:13
Would be fun....I currently work on basic modeling, optimization, and error propagation analysis of 3-d position and movement analysis sensor systems at the Mayo Clinic, and yes, MD's are a handful, particularly here.
I'm looking at schools now where I can look at fluid dynamics, and in-depth analysis of actual fluid dynamics within the instument would be fascinating. We should finally be getting to the point where sensors are small enough to place them inside of instruments to collect data without doing too much violence to the system.
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