The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2013
ABSTRACT From observation of graphs of brass input impedance magnitude and transfer function vs. ... more ABSTRACT From observation of graphs of brass input impedance magnitude and transfer function vs. frequency, it is obvious that there is a strong relationship between the two. Both exhibit a series of strong resonances extending from a low frequency limit to a cutoff frequency, which is inversely proportional to the instrument's bell radius (fc = c/(πa). However, the maxima of the impedance function correspond to the minima of the transfer function. As previously shown [Elliott et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (1982)], the relationship can be seen through a formula for efficiency given by powerout/powerin. This formula leads to the squared transfer function being proportional to the efficiency times the real part of the reciprocal of the input impedance, divided by the real part of the radiation admittance. Curves for input impedance, transfer function, and efficiency have been measured, simulated, and compared for several brass instruments. For frequencies below cutoff, the efficiency has an approximate monotonically increasing relationship with frequency, where the log-log slope is dependent on internal losses.
Reed woodwind instruments differ in both their geometry (mainly cylindrical or mainly conical) an... more Reed woodwind instruments differ in both their geometry (mainly cylindrical or mainly conical) and their excitation mechanism (single or double reed). How much of the resulting sound is due to the single/double reed, and how much to the geometry of the instrument? Measurements done by Almeidaet al.(J. Acoust. Soc. Am.,121, 1, 536-546, 2007) show that the flow vs pressure characteristic curve of an oboe reed is not that different from that of a clarinet reed, the only difference probably being due to pressure recovery inside the conical staple. Is it possible to make a single reed mouthpiece for an oboe, while keeping the conical staple, that would still give the oboe its characteristic sound? To find it out, a mouthpiece with the following characteristics was made: A standard clarinetBb reed can be attached to it, its volume is approximately that of the missing part of the instrument cone, and a standard French oboe staple can be inserted to it, so that it can be inserted in the usu...
The author Wu Ben wrote the entry ”Pipa” in ”The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians”, an... more The author Wu Ben wrote the entry ”Pipa” in ”The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians”, and he shares the same opinion of the performance and the pedagogy of the traditional Pipa Schools with the representative Pudong Pipa Master Lin Shicheng, who said in my personal interview and Pipa lecture that ”in the traditional Pipa school, interpretation is a master's art, and the masters always play without a score. The musical score merely helps the student memorize the music more easily, as the traditional score is not very complex and usually notes the core melody only” (Tsai, 2000, Beijing).This is why for this article I have used the recordings of three representative Pipa masters to analyze the same civil piece ”Yue er gao” (The Moon on High) instead of simply analyzing the musical score, using the computer program SNDAN developed by Rob Maher and James Beauchamp. As a result, the computer has provided three melody lines that illustrate how differently the three schools use...
Saxophonists agree that the detailed geometry of the mouthpiece plays an important role in both p... more Saxophonists agree that the detailed geometry of the mouthpiece plays an important role in both playability and sound production of the saxophone. The hypothesis to be tested in this paper is whether there is difference in 1. radiated sound (in terms of spectral centroid and sound pressure level) and in 2. playability when playing mouthpieces with different internal geometries. The results revealed that the radiated sound is scarcely influenced, but that the playability differs significantly depending on the mouthpiece.
In a previous study it was found that the pitch and timbre of a Scottish Border bagpipe chanter p... more In a previous study it was found that the pitch and timbre of a Scottish Border bagpipe chanter played by an articial blowing machine varied signicantly over different days. It was hypothesised that this could be due to variations in relative humidity of the air around the reed, as this would affect its moisture content, thus its physical parameters, and
There are no two instruments that are exactly the same. Even instruments of the same model and ma... more There are no two instruments that are exactly the same. Even instruments of the same model and material and made by the same maker differ slightly from one another. Some manufacturers of high quality instruments even claim that their instruments are "hand made". Before being able to conclude whether there is a significant difference in the sound of two instruments made with different material but otherwise "exactly" the same, the differences bound to exist between two instruments "exactly" the same including the material should be investigated. In this study, two pairs of flutes (Muramatsu with silver keywork and pulled toneholes) were taken: Gold vs Silver and Silver vs Silver. A graduand from the University of Music in Vienna played a fragment of music 30 times on each flute in an anechoic chamber. The session was recorded with two microphones: one close to her left ear, and another 3m away from her. The recorded signals were subsequently analysed wit...
Proponents of the Pulse Forming Theory claim that the reed closing time of wind instruments remai... more Proponents of the Pulse Forming Theory claim that the reed closing time of wind instruments remains approxi-mately constant over their playing range, causing constant spectral gaps and therefore formants in the spectra of wind instruments. One of the latest measurements of the oboe reed closing time of 0.4 to 0.5 ms dates back to the 1970's, and is often quoted thereafter in other articles. They also claim that the reed closing time depends only on the char-acteristics of the reed, and disregard the influence of the geometry of the instrument. In this article a modern, min-imally intrusive and accurate method for measuring the closing time of the oboe reed is presented. Other possi-ble theories that could explain the approximately constant closing time of the reed in woodwind instruments are also discussed.
The Pipa [1] is a short-necked lute and one of the oldest and most important solo instruments in ... more The Pipa [1] is a short-necked lute and one of the oldest and most important solo instruments in China. Because of its com-plicated technique and wide range of expressive musical forms and styles, the Pipa is an instrument which is popular not only in China, but also in Western culture. The traditional Pipa schools were formed in Shanghai, the most prosperous place, in the middle of the nineteenth century. Each Pipa School had its own special music collections, notations, techniques, styles, differ-ent ornaments, performance aesthetics and representative Pipa teachers [2]. For this study, recordings of three representative Pipa Masters were used to analyse the same civil piece Yue er gao (The Moon on High) [3], [4] [5] [6] instead of simply analysing the musical score, using the computer program SN-DAN developed by Rob Maher and James Beauchamp [7]. This paper explores the way the masters used to perform the same core melody but embellished it in various ways, which were governed by...
In the reed woodwind family instruments differ between them in both their geometry (mainly cylind... more In the reed woodwind family instruments differ between them in both their geometry (mainly cylindrical or mainly con-ical) and their excitation mechanism (single or double reed). How much of the produced sound is due to the single/double reed, and how much to the geometry of the instrument? Mea-surements done by Almeida et al. [1] show that the flow vs pressure characteristic curve of a double reed is not that differ-ent from that of a single reed, the only difference being probably due to pressure recovery inside the conical staple. Is it possible to make a single reed mouthpiece for an oboe, keeping the coni-cal staple, that would still give the oboe its characteristic sound? To find out, a mouthpiece with the following characteristics is being made: A standard clarinet B ♭ reed can be attached to it, its volume is approximately that of the missing part of the instrument cone, and a standard french oboe staple can be in-serted to it, so that it can be inserted in the usual way in ...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2013
ABSTRACT From observation of graphs of brass input impedance magnitude and transfer function vs. ... more ABSTRACT From observation of graphs of brass input impedance magnitude and transfer function vs. frequency, it is obvious that there is a strong relationship between the two. Both exhibit a series of strong resonances extending from a low frequency limit to a cutoff frequency, which is inversely proportional to the instrument's bell radius (fc = c/(πa). However, the maxima of the impedance function correspond to the minima of the transfer function. As previously shown [Elliott et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (1982)], the relationship can be seen through a formula for efficiency given by powerout/powerin. This formula leads to the squared transfer function being proportional to the efficiency times the real part of the reciprocal of the input impedance, divided by the real part of the radiation admittance. Curves for input impedance, transfer function, and efficiency have been measured, simulated, and compared for several brass instruments. For frequencies below cutoff, the efficiency has an approximate monotonically increasing relationship with frequency, where the log-log slope is dependent on internal losses.
Reed woodwind instruments differ in both their geometry (mainly cylindrical or mainly conical) an... more Reed woodwind instruments differ in both their geometry (mainly cylindrical or mainly conical) and their excitation mechanism (single or double reed). How much of the resulting sound is due to the single/double reed, and how much to the geometry of the instrument? Measurements done by Almeidaet al.(J. Acoust. Soc. Am.,121, 1, 536-546, 2007) show that the flow vs pressure characteristic curve of an oboe reed is not that different from that of a clarinet reed, the only difference probably being due to pressure recovery inside the conical staple. Is it possible to make a single reed mouthpiece for an oboe, while keeping the conical staple, that would still give the oboe its characteristic sound? To find it out, a mouthpiece with the following characteristics was made: A standard clarinetBb reed can be attached to it, its volume is approximately that of the missing part of the instrument cone, and a standard French oboe staple can be inserted to it, so that it can be inserted in the usu...
The author Wu Ben wrote the entry ”Pipa” in ”The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians”, an... more The author Wu Ben wrote the entry ”Pipa” in ”The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians”, and he shares the same opinion of the performance and the pedagogy of the traditional Pipa Schools with the representative Pudong Pipa Master Lin Shicheng, who said in my personal interview and Pipa lecture that ”in the traditional Pipa school, interpretation is a master's art, and the masters always play without a score. The musical score merely helps the student memorize the music more easily, as the traditional score is not very complex and usually notes the core melody only” (Tsai, 2000, Beijing).This is why for this article I have used the recordings of three representative Pipa masters to analyze the same civil piece ”Yue er gao” (The Moon on High) instead of simply analyzing the musical score, using the computer program SNDAN developed by Rob Maher and James Beauchamp. As a result, the computer has provided three melody lines that illustrate how differently the three schools use...
Saxophonists agree that the detailed geometry of the mouthpiece plays an important role in both p... more Saxophonists agree that the detailed geometry of the mouthpiece plays an important role in both playability and sound production of the saxophone. The hypothesis to be tested in this paper is whether there is difference in 1. radiated sound (in terms of spectral centroid and sound pressure level) and in 2. playability when playing mouthpieces with different internal geometries. The results revealed that the radiated sound is scarcely influenced, but that the playability differs significantly depending on the mouthpiece.
In a previous study it was found that the pitch and timbre of a Scottish Border bagpipe chanter p... more In a previous study it was found that the pitch and timbre of a Scottish Border bagpipe chanter played by an articial blowing machine varied signicantly over different days. It was hypothesised that this could be due to variations in relative humidity of the air around the reed, as this would affect its moisture content, thus its physical parameters, and
There are no two instruments that are exactly the same. Even instruments of the same model and ma... more There are no two instruments that are exactly the same. Even instruments of the same model and material and made by the same maker differ slightly from one another. Some manufacturers of high quality instruments even claim that their instruments are "hand made". Before being able to conclude whether there is a significant difference in the sound of two instruments made with different material but otherwise "exactly" the same, the differences bound to exist between two instruments "exactly" the same including the material should be investigated. In this study, two pairs of flutes (Muramatsu with silver keywork and pulled toneholes) were taken: Gold vs Silver and Silver vs Silver. A graduand from the University of Music in Vienna played a fragment of music 30 times on each flute in an anechoic chamber. The session was recorded with two microphones: one close to her left ear, and another 3m away from her. The recorded signals were subsequently analysed wit...
Proponents of the Pulse Forming Theory claim that the reed closing time of wind instruments remai... more Proponents of the Pulse Forming Theory claim that the reed closing time of wind instruments remains approxi-mately constant over their playing range, causing constant spectral gaps and therefore formants in the spectra of wind instruments. One of the latest measurements of the oboe reed closing time of 0.4 to 0.5 ms dates back to the 1970's, and is often quoted thereafter in other articles. They also claim that the reed closing time depends only on the char-acteristics of the reed, and disregard the influence of the geometry of the instrument. In this article a modern, min-imally intrusive and accurate method for measuring the closing time of the oboe reed is presented. Other possi-ble theories that could explain the approximately constant closing time of the reed in woodwind instruments are also discussed.
The Pipa [1] is a short-necked lute and one of the oldest and most important solo instruments in ... more The Pipa [1] is a short-necked lute and one of the oldest and most important solo instruments in China. Because of its com-plicated technique and wide range of expressive musical forms and styles, the Pipa is an instrument which is popular not only in China, but also in Western culture. The traditional Pipa schools were formed in Shanghai, the most prosperous place, in the middle of the nineteenth century. Each Pipa School had its own special music collections, notations, techniques, styles, differ-ent ornaments, performance aesthetics and representative Pipa teachers [2]. For this study, recordings of three representative Pipa Masters were used to analyse the same civil piece Yue er gao (The Moon on High) [3], [4] [5] [6] instead of simply analysing the musical score, using the computer program SN-DAN developed by Rob Maher and James Beauchamp [7]. This paper explores the way the masters used to perform the same core melody but embellished it in various ways, which were governed by...
In the reed woodwind family instruments differ between them in both their geometry (mainly cylind... more In the reed woodwind family instruments differ between them in both their geometry (mainly cylindrical or mainly con-ical) and their excitation mechanism (single or double reed). How much of the produced sound is due to the single/double reed, and how much to the geometry of the instrument? Mea-surements done by Almeida et al. [1] show that the flow vs pressure characteristic curve of a double reed is not that differ-ent from that of a single reed, the only difference being probably due to pressure recovery inside the conical staple. Is it possible to make a single reed mouthpiece for an oboe, keeping the coni-cal staple, that would still give the oboe its characteristic sound? To find out, a mouthpiece with the following characteristics is being made: A standard clarinet B ♭ reed can be attached to it, its volume is approximately that of the missing part of the instrument cone, and a standard french oboe staple can be in-serted to it, so that it can be inserted in the usual way in ...
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