Volume 118, Issue 5, November 2005
Index of content:
- MUSIC AND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 
118(2005); http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.2041207View Description Hide Description
This paper investigates the dynamic range of the clarinet from the oscillation threshold to the extinction at high pressure level. The use of an elementary model for the reed-mouthpiece valve effect combined with a simplified model of the pipe assuming frequency independent losses (Raman’s model) allows an analytical calculation of the oscillations and their stability analysis. The different thresholds are shown to depend on parameters related to embouchure parameters and to the absorption coefficient in the pipe. Their values determine the dynamic range of the fundamental oscillations and the bifurcation scheme at the extinction.
118(2005); http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.2041287View Description Hide Description
In a simple model, the reed of the clarinet is mechanically loaded by the series combination of the acoustical impedances of the instrument itself and of the player’s airway. Here we measure the complex impedance spectrum of players’ airways using an impedance head adapted to fit inside a clarinet mouthpiece. A direct current shunt with high acoustical resistance allows players to blow normally, so the players can simulate the tract condition under playing conditions. The reproducibility of the results suggest that the players’ “muscle memory” is reliable for this task. Most players use a single, highly stable vocal tract configuration over most of the playing range, except for the altissimo register. However, this “normal” configuration varies substantially among musicians. All musicians change the configuration, often drastically for “special effects” such as glissandi and slurs: the tongue is lowered and the impedance magnitude reduced when the player intends to lower the pitch or to slur downwards, and vice versa.
118(2005); http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.2046787View Description Hide Description
In this article, a class of numerical schemes for the simulation of nonlinear coupled longitudinal/transverse string vibration is presented. Though there are various ways of arriving at such schemes, special attention is paid here to energy conservation in nonlinear modelsystems and its transfer to an analogous discrete quantity in a difference scheme. Such exact numerical energy conservation can lead to simple global stability conditions, which can be otherwise difficult to ascertain for nonlinear difference schemes—in particular, such conditions may be arrived at without any reliance on frequency domain concepts (i.e., Fourier or Laplace transforms), which are of only moderate utility in the analysis of nonlinear systems. Implementation details are discussed and numerical results are presented.