Link between objective and subjective characterizations of Bb clarinet reeds

Abstract

This paper deals with the subjective and mechanical characterizations of single cane reeds.Subjective tests performed by a single expert gave an estimation of the subjective descriptors "ease of playing", "brightness", "roundness", "projection" and "global quality". The mechanical characterization involved measurements of static compliance, dynamic compliance, resonance frequency and Q factor of the first vibration mode. Two sets of clarinet reeds were studied. The first set contained 50 reeds identical in cut, brand and strength. The second set contained 150 reeds with 3 different cuts but identical in brand, strength and static compliance. Results show that the perceptual space is almost bi-dimensional for the first set of reeds and mono-dimensional for the second set. For the first set, the two dimensions were largely created by the descriptors ease of playing (highly correlated to brightness) and roundness. For the second set (with a constant static compliance), the main dimension was created by all the descriptors, that are correlated. The study of correlation coefficients between subjective descriptors and mechanical parameters shows that the static and dynamic compliance are correlated with the descriptor ease of playing for set 1. For set 2, the correlations are too low to make a link between the perceptual space and the objective parameters.

Investigation of the Relationships Between Perceived Qualities and Sound Parameters of Saxophone Reeds

“…Our study agrees with the results presented in [16]: the ease of playing estimated by one expert clarinet player is correlated with the reed stiffness measured in astatic and dynamic wayf or manyr eeds. The use of ap anel of musicians allows abetter generalization of the perceptual dimension of the reed.…”

“…These results were based on as mall set of reeds (12),as ingle musician, and were limited to simple correlations between subjective variables and acoustical measurements. Astudy with larger sets of Bb clarinet reeds (50and 150)was presented in [16]. Different perceptual descriptors (e.g.…”

Towards 3D printed saxophone mouthpiece personalization: Acoustical analysis of design variations

“…Hence, this calculation considers that differences in the beating conditions might appear, which result in differences in brightness [42]. After smoothing the segment with a Hanning window and filtering it at 15 000 Hz to reduce high-frequency noise, the first 35 peaks of its spectrum were used to compute a peak-wise spectral-centroid as in [41].…”

“…This correlation between l lay and brightness has not been reported in the literature. It is however expected that changes in l lay may affect reed beating and hence brightness [9,42]. Both the baffle height h baffle and the throat size s throat were expected to have an influence on the spectral centroid [11,46], as seen in Figure 9c, yet they have unexpected trends between levels 1 and 2.…”

Three-dimensional vibration patterns of alto saxophone reeds measured on different mouthpieces under mimicked realistic playing conditions

“…The behavior of natural reeds can differ rather strongly between specimen and depends greatly on humidity, while with synthetic materials the mechanical properties of different specimens vary far less. The link between the objectively measured mechanical parameters of the reed and the subjective characterization of the sound has been studied in detail (Gazengel et al, 2016). In the study correlation coefficients between subjective descriptors and mechanical parameters were retrieved.…”