Measuring free reed oscillation: Some case studies

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of efforts to measure several quantities related to sound production in free reed instruments. All were undertaken with limited financial resources for equipment and a professor who started with limited experience in experimental physics, but with a good supply of talented and creative undergraduate students. The case studies to be presented will include detecting the presence of higher transverse modes and torsional modes of vibration in an air-driven free reed, detection and significance of these modes in the initial transient, measurement of the volume airflow as a function of time in an oscillating free reed, and using a combination of measurement and theoretical calculation to predict the sounding frequencies of free reed pipes with non-uniform bore shapes.This paper presents an overview of efforts to measure several quantities related to sound production in free reed instruments. All were undertaken with limited financial resources for equipment and a professor who started with limited experience in experimental physics, but with a good supply of talented and creative undergraduate students. The case studies to be presented will include detecting the presence of higher transverse modes and torsional modes of vibration in an air-driven free reed, detection and significance of these modes in the initial transient, measurement of the volume airflow as a function of time in an oscillating free reed, and using a combination of measurement and theoretical calculation to predict the sounding frequencies of free reed pipes with non-uniform bore shapes.