TO TOBY, PALO & OTHERS - PAD & MATERIAL TONE
jim
major manufacturers who claim a difference based on material (most of
them) is that they base their statements on anecdotal evidence without
having done any control of the factors that have been shown to make a
difference".
Please read the scientific experiments made with my "pad tone tester"
(go to http://cvip.fresno.com/~js210/fpad.html). This tool makes it
easy to compare the tone of different pads. John Coltman also made
some scientific tests that showed that pad material makes a tone
difference (beyond just sealing) and my pads came out glowing in that
article - "Musical Instument Technology" Issue 23
Now there is the dramatic improvement with the gold or silver plated
pads. I busted my ass for years coming up with a better sounding and
lasting pad that doesn't stick and they are working great for those
who have the intelligence and open-mindedness to use them.
Unfortunately the world is full of Lemmings who keep doing the same
old thing and experience the same old problems over and over with
leather pads until doomsday.
As far as the tone of materials go, I have heard too many so called
experts who say that accurate objective tone tests between different
materials have not been made or they say that the material is not
important. They are missing something. I just attended the National
flute convention. This happens every year and there are hundreds of
Flute headjoints of different materials to test. Why flute head
joints? Because there is no variable such as a reed involved and the
headjoint is where all the flute tone comes from. Flutes are much
more tone sensitive than saxes and materials make a noticeable
difference where that same material diff may go unnoticed in a horn
(to an untrained ear). Flutes are made much more accurately than
horns and the headjoints are very consistantly made and so comparing
one to another is a good test as long as you stick with different
materials assembled by the same manufacturer. There is also common
experience shared throughout the professional flute players and
manufactures and this knowledge is freely available if you talk to the
better flute headjoint makers such as Dave Williams or Dana Sheridan.
Flutists are very particular about tone and they spend their lives and
money pursuing it. Any experienced flutist will tell you that
materials make a diff and wall thickness/weight also makes a diff
(just a few thousands of an inch). Its not my argument really, its
common knowledge in the flute world by players who are forever making
comparisons. It’s the human ear that we are catering to and so
I put my faith in the better players who listen.
Jim Schmidt
Gold plated pads at
www.jsengineering.net
ansermetniac
Jim
Are your scientific studies published in a book? If not you are out
of luck here?
Abbedd
______________
E.A.F.E.
PT
<snip>
>
> Jim
>
> Are your scientific studies published in a book? If not you are out
> of luck here?
I'd have to agree with Ansermetniac, this doesn't look like a scientific
study, more of a sales site, but the pad tone tester looks like its would be
very useful for _subjectively_ evaluating the difference between the sound
of different pads.
BTW I don't think either Toby or Palo was suggesting that pad coverings
don't make any difference, it's well established for instance that
resonators on pads do make a difference. From what I remember previous
discussions have been mostly about the material and finish of the body of a
saxophone, not pads (or mouthpieces).
However I'm very interested to hear what these pads do to the sound of a
horn, maybe next time I need a repad but that may not be for a decade or so.
I would definitely be interested if they didn't sound any different to
leather pads, but had the advantages of not sticking or wearing out, but I'd
be very cautious about spending a lot of money on a set of pads and fitting
them if they were going to alter the sound of my horn in a way I couldn't
predict.
I always like to keep an open mind on new products, I don't mind admitting I
was quite sceptical about the Saxrax, but since trying one out on my bass
I'm completely converted.
Anyway, keep up the work, nice to see someone out there innovating!
Best regards
Pete Thomas
"Not enough tension can create too much tension"
***********
On-line saxophone exercises, composition and jazz theory courses
www.petethomas.co.uk
***********
Saxophone Instruction DVD
http://www.dvdsource.co.uk/products/13001595
***********
To reply privately please use the link on my site.
ansermetniac
>On (22/8/04 6:22 pm) "ansermetniac" wrote the following:
>
><snip>
>>
>> Jim
>>
>> Are your scientific studies published in a book? If not you are out
>> of luck here?
>
>I'd have to agree with Ansermetniac, this doesn't look like a scientific
>study, more of a sales site,
I was not commenting on the site.
Abbedd
______________
E.A.F.E.
P. Tung
not me.
You're also misstating my position, for what it's worth. I have alot of
faith in voodoo, lol. Put voodoo an science in a ring, and I will bet on
voodoo most of the time, just because there is a great deal in voodoo that
science doesn't yet - and never will - know how to handle.
Glad to hear you did some testing. I'll click the link a bit later.
"jim" <jse...@cvip.net> wrote in message
news:1651e26d.04082...@posting.google.com...
P. Tung
"PT" <petet...@noreply.com> wrote in message
news:BD4EA019.9322%petet...@noreply.com...
> On (22/8/04 6:22 pm) "ansermetniac" wrote the following:
>
> <snip>
> >
> > Jim
> >
> > Are your scientific studies published in a book? If not you are out
> > of luck here?
>
> I'd have to agree with Ansermetniac, this doesn't look like a scientific
> study, more of a sales site, but the pad tone tester looks like its would
be
> very useful for _subjectively_ evaluating the difference between the sound
> of different pads.
>
> BTW I don't think either Toby or Palo was suggesting that pad coverings
> don't make any difference, it's well established for instance that
> resonators on pads do make a difference. From what I remember previous
> discussions have been mostly about the material and finish of the body of
a
> saxophone, not pads (or mouthpieces).
I definitely do believe that the pad surface matters, or rather the surface
of what covers the tonehole, both in shape & substance.
>
> However I'm very interested to hear what these pads do to the sound of a
> horn, maybe next time I need a repad but that may not be for a decade or
so.
> I would definitely be interested if they didn't sound any different to
> leather pads, but had the advantages of not sticking or wearing out, but
I'd
> be very cautious about spending a lot of money on a set of pads and
fitting
> them if they were going to alter the sound of my horn in a way I couldn't
> predict.
On the one hand, my first saxophone teacher, also excellent repairperson,
had the opinion that the "perfect saxophone" would be one without toneholes
(one continuous expanse of brass, other than the mpc), but that could play
all the same pitches (not really possible), so his idea was that the ideal
pad would be made of brass or a metal that reacted like brass. I guess if
you extend this "theory," then the shape and volume that would be ideal for
the pad/resonator would be one that most closely (acoustically)
approximated - in concert with the tonehole chimney - the characterstics
that the area would have had were there no tonehole there. (In practice,
this probably doesn't work, fwiw, because the tonehole placement is probably
influenced in the first place, designwise, by trial and error experiments
with a flat or slightly convex surface - a pad that gives when pressed to
the tonehole.)
On the other hand, a repairperson whose work I have never heard any player
complain about - and whose rep among other repair techs is top notch,
genuinely - once told me he doesn't believe in drastically oversized resos,
because leather is fundamental to the sound we associate with saxophone.
Personally, I think it is a case by case basis, depending on the player and
the horn - the tastes of the former and the response tendencies of the
latter. Generally, there is a good bit of intuition involved in the end
whenever a final choice for pad/reso config is chosen.
I don't think there is any one set-up/style that is "best" across the board.
There is also a question of feel, under the fingers, which is more important
than people think to the way they "hear" what they play, and that's
influenced by more than just the pad surface but the feel of the felt, even
the type of adhesive that is used.
Not trying to start an argument, just fleshing out, since my name appears
here in the header.
I might avoid this thread and just see about Jim's article in private.
If someone answers me and I don't write back it doesn't mean I didn't see or
that the silence is personal.
PT
> On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 19:10:17 +0100, PT <petet...@noreply.com> wrote:
>
>> On (22/8/04 6:22 pm) "ansermetniac" wrote the following:
>>
>> <snip>
>>>
>>> Jim
>>>
>>> Are your scientific studies published in a book? If not you are out
>>> of luck here?
>>
>> I'd have to agree with Ansermetniac, this doesn't look like a scientific
>> study, more of a sales site,
>
> I was not commenting on the site.
>
> Abbedd
Sorry if I've got this confused, as Jim only referred to one URL, I thought
you were referring to that as the scientific studies. Is there a URL for
Jim's scientific studies that you refer to?
Steve Marshall
"PT" <petet...@noreply.com> wrote
> > I was not commenting on the site.
> >
> > Abbedd
>
> Sorry if I've got this confused, as Jim only referred to one URL, I
thought
> you were referring to that as the scientific studies. Is there a URL for
> Jim's scientific studies that you refer to?
I think he just means that having a website saying you do tests doesn't mean
you have done any useful science. Where's the results ? What were aims or
the conclusions ?
If you compare a couple of mouthpieces and find they are different - is
that science ?
Steve M
ansermetniac
Actually I am saying that there are many in this group who will not
accept scientific theories if they are not out of moldy books.
Abbedd
>
______________
E.A.F.E.
Saxtroll
> had the opinion that the "perfect saxophone" would be one without
toneholes
> (one continuous expanse of brass, other than the mpc), but that could play
> all the same pitches (not really possible), so his idea was that the ideal
> pad would be made of brass or a metal that reacted like brass. I guess if
> you extend this "theory," then the shape and volume that would be ideal
for
> the pad/resonator would be one that most closely (acoustically)
> approximated - in concert with the tonehole chimney - the characterstics
> that the area would have had were there no tonehole there. (In practice,
> this probably doesn't work, fwiw, because the tonehole placement is
probably
> influenced in the first place, designwise, by trial and error experiments
> with a flat or slightly convex surface - a pad that gives when pressed to
> the tonehole.)
Palo, that is very interesting. I guess if we ever come up with a material
that exhibits both high speed conformity (for sealing) AND brass-like
acoustics (on the surface) then we would be getting close to such an ideal.
It would have to be durable and low mass. If the conformity could be done in
three dimensions, we could even be rid of tonehole chimneys.
I'm imagining a bistable liquid/solid metal material that has a surface
tension so low that it practically seals itself on contact with the
tonehole. Such a thing could exist in a future which seems to come faster
every year.
It's a sci-fi fantasy but worth keeping a watchful eye on materials science
for the betterment of our art. With "critical path" type knowledge
acceleration, we can look to our imaginations a little more than we used to.
("Critical Path" is in reference to the life and work of Buckminster Fuller
for those in the know...)
Thanks for the brain tickle, folks.
-Saxtroll (I am a "Toby" also so even though it's not me, my eyes get big
when I see the name.)
PT
>> On the one hand, my first saxophone teacher, also excellent repairperson,
>> had the opinion that the "perfect saxophone" would be one without
> toneholes
>> (one continuous expanse of brass, other than the mpc), but that could play
>> all the same pitches (not really possible), so his idea was that the ideal
>> pad would be made of brass or a metal that reacted like brass. I guess if
>> you extend this "theory," then the shape and volume that would be ideal
> for
>> the pad/resonator would be one that most closely (acoustically)
>> approximated - in concert with the tonehole chimney - the characterstics
>> that the area would have had were there no tonehole there. (In practice,
>> this probably doesn't work, fwiw, because the tonehole placement is
> probably
>> influenced in the first place, designwise, by trial and error experiments
>> with a flat or slightly convex surface - a pad that gives when pressed to
>> the tonehole.)
>
> Palo, that is very interesting. I guess if we ever come up with a material
> that exhibits both high speed conformity (for sealing) AND brass-like
> acoustics (on the surface) then we would be getting close to such an ideal.
<snip>
Great. But...
How long before we buy little bits of frozen ferret skin to stick on the
inside to make it sound more like a saxophone?
jim
"Jim Are your scientific studies published in a book? If not you are
out of luck here?"
Abbedd, please obtain a copy of "Musical Instrument Technology" Issue
23 (call 425 413 4343)
Also "Flute Talk" Feb 2003 (Gold plated flute pad article).
Also "The Flutist Quarterly" vol 27 #2 winter 2002 (high tech flute
pads article)
Jim said: "John Coltman also made some scientific tests that showed
that pad material makes a tone difference (beyond just sealing) and my
pads came out glowing in that article", yes this is shameless
promotion mixed in with sceintific approach but I'll do whatever it
takes to rattle some cages and wake people up. The Gold plated pads
are going well with pro flutists but horn players are still sitting on
the sidelines just wondering and that is very frustrating for me.
Concerning tone and science according to others: I am not trying to
go against anyone in particular but to find a starting place for
discussion. My point is that anyone can make a test and I am trying
to draw attention to the pad tone tester, John Coltman's pad tone
research, and the thousands of Flutists who test head joints for tone
(and often prefer one material over another). Generally speaking -
You don't get to test identically shaped sax mouthpieces made of
different materials (same exact dimensions) but you can do this with
professional quality flute heads. You may see thirty or more lined
up at one booth at a national flute convention. & "Scientists" are
missing that opportunity (unless you can allow that flutists are being
sceintific in their testing, they are if fact making comparisons).
If "scientists" want a definitive answer about materials and tone
then I can't think of a better way than the flute head joint testing
technique. If they want a controlled test performed to their
particulars, they can do it anyway they want. Then they can write it
down in a book and confirm what so many players already know.
Steve Marshall
"ansermetniac" <anserm...@hotmail.com> wrote
> Actually I am saying that there are many in this group who will not
> accept scientific theories if they are not out of moldy books.
Any serious scientific papers are published for peer review.
If the details are published - even on a website, it gives people a chance
to test procedures/ results. Without the necessary information we have
nothing to go on but their word.
Anyone can come up with a theory. Proving it is another matter.
Steve M
ansermetniac
My theories are proved yet there a a few here that want to see it in a
moldy book and won't accept it till then
Abbedd
______________
E.A.F.E.
Steve Marshall
"ansermetniac" <anserm...@hotmail.com> wrote
> My theories are proved yet there a a few here that want to see it in a
> moldy book and won't accept it till then
>
Demonstration is one form of proof. Can you demonstrate that different
finishes produce different sounding saxophones ? Where is the research to
back up such theories ?
Peer reviews are important as it allows other to assess the validity of
scientific claims. Publishing allows for both credit for you work and
validity of the claims.
If you don't publish theories remain theories and cannot be considered
proven.
Steve M
PT
> Abbedd said:
>
>
> "Jim Are your scientific studies published in a book? If not you are
> out of luck here?"
>
> Abbedd, please obtain a copy of "Musical Instrument Technology" Issue
> 23 (call 425 413 4343)
>
> Also "Flute Talk" Feb 2003 (Gold plated flute pad article).
>
> Also "The Flutist Quarterly" vol 27 #2 winter 2002 (high tech flute
> pads article)
>
> Jim said: "John Coltman also made some scientific tests that showed
> that pad material makes a tone difference (beyond just sealing) and my
> pads came out glowing in that article", yes this is shameless
> promotion mixed in with sceintific approach but I'll do whatever it
> takes to rattle some cages and wake people up. The Gold plated pads
> are going well with pro flutists but horn players are still sitting on
> the sidelines just wondering and that is very frustrating for me.
Has it occurred to you that there may be a very basic difference between
flautists and saxophone players? Maybe I'm wrong, but in my experience
flautists are usually after "bright" and "loud" which is fair enough, the
flute is a quiet instrument in the lower registers and quite low on
overtones. I swap headjoints on my flute depending on the sound I want,
there is a big difference between the original wooden head and a custom
solid silver.
Saxophone players on the other hand are often after different sounds, but
not necessarily bright. "Bright" is offered by mouthpiece manufacturers via
baffles, thinner rails, smaller chamber size, material etc. Many
saxophonists are after dark, mellow, warm and along with mouthpieces to do
this there are also reflectors and ligatures (although my experience of what
ligatures do is more "buzzy" then "bright" but that's another story).
I'm very interested in your innovations, I think you are on difficult
ground though if you are talking about improvements that are aesthetic
rather than scientific. I think we all know that pads can make a difference
to the sound, nobody is disputing that. I'd just love the chance to try them
out (your saxophones too), rather than rely on science - and I don't need to
see it in a moldy (sic) book - which can never tell me whether I will
actually like the change in sound. Trying a flute won't tell me anything
about the saxophone.
<snip>
> If "scientists" want a definitive answer about materials and tone
> then I can't think of a better way than the flute head joint testing
> technique. If they want a controlled test performed to their
> particulars, they can do it anyway they want. Then they can write it
> down in a book and confirm what so many players already know.
Sorry, I don't think scientists will ever be able to say what sounds better.
Players can. Or am I missing the point here?
ansermetniac
<s...@atmosBlockA.plus.com> wrote:
>If you don't publish theories remain theories and cannot be considered
>proven.
Are you really serious?
Abbedd
______________
E.A.F.E.
Toby
<saddles up, here we go again>
There is no question that pad material makes a difference in terms of tone,
I don't think that anyone disputes this--especially so in saxes, in which a
significant portion of the bore is actually "pad". This is the whole point
of resonators--to change the surface characteristic of all that leather.
As far as wall materials go, I beg to disagree. As I pointed out, the
studies I have seen--all the studies--find differences between different
instruments, even similar instruments in different materials, but no
significant differences that can be attributed to the material itself.
I will repeat yet again the study published in (I believe) "Flute Journal"
in which researchers obtained four handmade Prima Sankyo flutes--two in
silver, one in gold and one in palladium. The two silver specimens were
meant to act as a control--they researchers wanted to see how much
variability there was in tone between two (presumably identical--or as
identical as possible) instruments in the same material so that the
differences they found could be factored into the experiment.
It turned out that the differences between the two silver flutes was so
great that it completely overshadowed any differences that might be caused
by materials. The only difference found that might have been attributable to
materials was a slight lowering of the volume of the 7th partial. Since this
partial is very weak to begin with, and disappears completely in the second
octave, the researchers concluded that materials had no significant effect.
The corollary is that whatever very minor geometrical differences were
present in those very precisely made headjoints and bodies made a big
difference.
Someone else posted a link to another quite detailed study here the last
time we went through this which reached essentially the same conclusion. I
believe in that study the conclusion was reached that different materials
might have affected the maximum power output in fortissimo playing by 0.5
dB.
Again I refer you to Coltman's classic paper eliminating play and listener
bias with flutes in various materials.
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/marl/Coltman/ --see "Effect of material on flute
tone quality."
In the 150 years or so that this debate has been raging makes and players
have consistently claimed that materials make a difference. A number of
scientific studies have purported to back up their claims, but each of these
have been shown to have been faulty in one way or another on closer
scrutiny.
It's no secret that makers pretty consistently claim that materials are
significant. I don't think you'll find a single manufacturer's website in
which claims are not made for the "richness" of the sound of gold or the
"brightness" of silver, or claims about the "agility" of response of thin
walls, etc. But so far once manufacturing variations are factored out no one
can show any truth to those claims.
I don't believe in fairies, but if you wish to that is certainly your
choice. And perhaps someday one will come knocking on my door, but until
then...
Toby
"jim" <jse...@cvip.net> wrote in message
news:1651e26d.04082...@posting.google.com...
Wdflannery
>bias with flutes in various materials.
>
>http://ccrma.stanford.edu/marl/Coltman/ --see "Effect of material on flute
>tone quality."
Did you read this? From the preface (it was PDF so I can't cut and paste)
..... the article says there is no discernable difference in sound between a
silver flute, a heavy copper flute, and a wood flute. None whatsoever. The
'published article' seems to contradict everything you are saying.
ansermetniac
Is that what it said? ROFLMAO. That is science?
Abbedd
______________
E.A.F.E.
Toby
Toby
"ansermetniac" <anserm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ls4li0dq0uq2670bd...@4ax.com...
Toby
players and listeners perceiving differences based on those expectations.
Coltman quite elegantly showed that once you eliminate the expectations in a
double-blind test you eliminate perceived differences as well.
That was in support of my point that materials don't make a difference...
Toby
"Wdflannery" <wdfla...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040823203804...@mb-m03.aol.com...
Toby
the pad surfaces or their resistance to deformation would affect tone and
response for the better. I'd bet Jim's pads do just that.
Toby
"jim" <jse...@cvip.net> wrote in message
news:1651e26d.04082...@posting.google.com...
Toby
Palo wrote...
> On the other hand, a repairperson whose work I have never heard any player
> complain about - and whose rep among other repair techs is top notch,
> genuinely - once told me he doesn't believe in drastically oversized
resos,
> because leather is fundamental to the sound we associate with saxophone.
>
I have a "The" Martin tenor without resos that compares favorably with my
Super 20 with resos. Certainly different, but not noticeably worse in tone
or response.
A number of efforts to rationalize bassoon construction have failed, because
the resulting instruments, while superior in tonal evenness and response,
just didn't sound enough like bassoons...
Toby
Robert
>
>
> Actually I am saying that there are many in this group who will not
> accept scientific theories if they are not out of moldy books.
>
>
>
> Abbedd
Ok, send your books to me. Everything gets moldy on my back porch. For
a modest fee I will return them moldy.
Fee schedule:
Light mold, easily wiped off: $5.00 plus shipping.
Medium mold, tasty: $10.00 plus shipping.
Heavy mold: cover & pages warped, some text unreadable: $20.00 plus
shipping.
The delivery time depends upon the degree of mold desired and the season
of the year.
Custom molds are available for an extra fee.
Toby
FWIW I am a great believer in voodoo and supernatural phenomena. There is
plenty that will never come under the dominion of science, and Heisenberg
even showed that it is mathematically impossible to know "everything" about
a particle at the same time. I think that this carries over into the
phenomenal world that we know, well above the quantum level.
The whole point of science rests in predictability. If scientific results
are repeatable and lead to a high degree of predictability then they become
very useful. The fact that 1 and 1 seem to repeatedly and consistently add
up to 2 make most of what we know possible. The fact that materials behave
in a consistent manner and quite a lot is known about that manner allows us
to make rockets that do not explode and (for better or worse) bombs that do
explode.
I would never claim that science is omniscient or that all the phenomenal
world could ever be known (for that to happen science would have to be able
to list all the numbers comprising infinity, for instance), but insofar as
scientific knowledge works to predict phenomenal behavior it can an
excellent tool.
There is a tremendous amount known about the physical behavior of materials.
If brass behaves consistently in a certain way in numerous applications it
is logical to assume, Captain, that it will behave similarly when it is
incorporated into the body of a saxophone or a mouthpiece. A tremendous
amount is also known about acoustics, and again if the knowledge works in
diverse applications it should also work with sax acoustics.
One big problem comes, of course, in the complexity of the sound generation
process in any musical instrument. The models that science uses are
approximations, and as such there is always the possibility that factors
unaccounted for will prove to be important. The way to test for this is to
use the models to make predictions and then do experiments to see if the
results bear out those predictions.
On the question of materials only a few studies have ever purported to show
that they make a difference in the sound of woodwind instruments, and on
reflection all these studies were shown to be flawed by demonstrating errors
in the procedures used. It may be that materials will still be shown to have
a slight effect via such little-explored phenomena as differential vibration
at non-spherical areas of the bore (such as at toneholes) but no one expects
that those will be large effects.
If you argue that makers' claims (and they nearly universally make that
claim) lend validity to the supposition that materials affect the sound of
woodwinds, you are falling for the famous Ad Verecundiam logical
fallacy--the appeal to authority (I've been having a lot of political
arguments with righties lately and they love those logical fallacies). Just
because people you think should know say it's so isn't worth a plug nickel
if they haven't controlled for the factors that are known to make a
difference. If you believe the "authorities" then of course you also know
that the US went into Vietnam to save the world from monolithic communism
;-)
Of course the wonderful thing is that everyone is free to believe whatever
they want to believe. It may even be that occasionally 1 + 1 = 3, but those
instances are rare enough not to seriously jeapordize the phenomenal world,
but only to cause Windows to crash mysteriously just when you are in the
middle of something important.
Toby
"P. Tung" <checksite...@nobspaaam.justsaxes.com> wrote in message
news:Fz6Wc.5028$0o5....@bignews1.bellsouth.net...
Toby
Toby
"ansermetniac" <anserm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:uarki01mkbqbv95vn...@4ax.com...
ansermetniac
>Are you really serious in questioning whether he is serious?
>
>Toby
Of that you can be sure. I am still not sure if this statement was a
joke. It has to be. But I want to be sure before I respond to it.
Abbedd
>
>"ansermetniac" <anserm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:uarki01mkbqbv95vn...@4ax.com...
>> On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 21:35:14 +0100, "Steve Marshall"
>> <s...@atmosBlockA.plus.com> wrote:
>>
>> >If you don't publish theories remain theories and cannot be considered
>> >proven.
>>
>>
>> Are you really serious?
>>
>> Abbedd
>> ______________
>> E.A.F.E.
>
______________
E.A.F.E.
Toby
accepted practice. Theories are generally published with substantiating
evidence in the form of research, and then subject to peer review, where
others qualified in the field look for possible flaws in the reasoning or
the research before accepting (or rejecting with qualifying reasons given)
the theory and/or the research.
Otherwise anyone could claim anything without having to show that it is
true.
Toby
"ansermetniac" <anserm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:27jli0ddid2ck6ofm...@4ax.com...
Wdflannery
I was. On checking back, I see that I mis-read it. My bad.
P. Tung
"Toby" <zdft...@ggol.com> wrote in message
news:cgeed3$6v4$1...@newsflood.tokyo.att.ne.jp...
Purely an aside: the funny thing about logical fallacies, is that usually a
real whopper (however unassuming) of a statement can be analyzed to have a
good number of applicable logical fallacies working within it, at the same
time.
I guess that is partially why it is so easy to get away with a real whopper,
and why politicians and people do, all day long and well into the night,
lol. A really good lie is so much trouble to unpack, that most people would
rather find a way to go along with it than suffer at having to untie it.
P. Tung
"less loss of frequency partials" does not necessarily transfer to "better
tone." One of the things people like about leather, among people who do
like leather - because it sure ain't the gained resonance, lol - is the way
the leather kills upper partials, making them recede, while appearing to
make lower partials pop forward, I think.
"Toby" <zdft...@ggol.com> wrote in message
news:cgeb3q$2nn$1...@newsflood.tokyo.att.ne.jp...
P. Tung
> <snip>
>
> Palo wrote...
>
> > On the other hand, a repairperson whose work I have never heard any
player
> > complain about - and whose rep among other repair techs is top notch,
> > genuinely - once told me he doesn't believe in drastically oversized
> resos,
> > because leather is fundamental to the sound we associate with saxophone.
> >
>
> I have a "The" Martin tenor without resos that compares favorably with my
> Super 20 with resos. Certainly different, but not noticeably worse in tone
> or response.
And this is your scientific opinion?
(lol - I'm kidding)
P. Tung
>
> Palo wrote...
>
> > On the other hand, a repairperson whose work I have never heard any
player
> > complain about - and whose rep among other repair techs is top notch,
> > genuinely - once told me he doesn't believe in drastically oversized
> resos,
> > because leather is fundamental to the sound we associate with saxophone.
> >
>
> I have a "The" Martin tenor without resos that compares favorably with my
> Super 20 with resos. Certainly different, but not noticeably worse in tone
> or response.
quick p.s.:
There are probably a good number of websurfers (like myself) who have read
Bob Ackerman's site. He put an article up some time ago on his own
preference, for Conn. He prefers no reso, for a host of reasons.
I don't know.
I never get the response I like, especially down low, without some kind of
reso. No doubt the specific horn has a role to play here, as well as of
course the pad itself and in particular the brand and its skin. I have not
done a whole horn with just center rivet using the pads that I like, so when
I compare "before" and "after" (tightening up "before" to playtest) it is
always sort of apples and oranges - or maybe more like Grimes Golden and
Granny Smith, I dunno.
Robert Steinberg
> I have not
> done a whole horn with just center rivet using the pads that I like, so when
> I compare "before" and "after" (tightening up "before" to playtest) it is
> always sort of apples and oranges - or maybe more like Grimes Golden and
> Granny Smith, I dunno.
I did my 1920 Martin tenor with rivet pads out of curiosity and looking
for the "period" effect. I was expecting the pads to warm up the sound
of this old powerhouse. The results, while totally inconclusive, gave me
the impression that for the most part there is not a dramatic difference
until you hit the bell keys which are noticable warmer than....
but that's just the point, warmer than what? Without another identical
horn it's impossible to compare. I can't compare it to the memory of the
sound before the repad. I had a 20s Buescher tru tone at the time with
original snap-in resos which was brighter in the bell notes. All of my
other saxes have resonators. So other than impression and conjecture,
there's nothing conclusive at all.
I remember reading an article in Saxophone Journal in which Emilio Lyons
talks about pads not having a significant effect if the pads skin are
tight.
$.02
--
Robert Steinberg
MidiOpera Co.
http://www.midiopera.com
Steve Marshall
"Toby" <zdft...@ggol.com> wrote
> To me what he said makes perfect sense and is totally in accord with
> accepted practice. Theories are generally published with substantiating
> evidence in the form of research, and then subject to peer review, where
> others qualified in the field look for possible flaws in the reasoning or
> the research before accepting (or rejecting with qualifying reasons given)
> the theory and/or the research.
>
> Otherwise anyone could claim anything without having to show that it is
> true.
Thank you - yes, exactly.
Steve M
Toby
so it would make sense for the lows to be affected more than the highs by
lack of resos.
I'm all for resos myself--On the next repad I will definitely have resos put
on the Martin.
Toby
"P. Tung" <checksite...@nobspaaam.justsaxes.com> wrote in message
news:K7MWc.14075$0o5....@bignews1.bellsouth.net...
Toby
> Purely an aside: the funny thing about logical fallacies, is that usually
a
> real whopper (however unassuming) of a statement can be analyzed to have a
> good number of applicable logical fallacies working within it, at the same
> time.
>
> I guess that is partially why it is so easy to get away with a real
whopper,
> and why politicians and people do, all day long and well into the night,
> lol. A really good lie is so much trouble to unpack, that most people
would
> rather find a way to go along with it than suffer at having to untie it.
LOL! Ain't that the truth!
Toby
Toby
such.
It's actually a pretty good system, though open of course to politicking, as
is everything.
Toby
"Steve Marshall" <s...@atmosBlockA.plus.com> wrote in message
news:412bdf5d$0$13455$ed2e...@ptn-nntp-reader04.plus.net...
MrWitworth
Conns. I just got home from an early night at the Crossroads jazz club in
Garwood NJ and caught Bob Ackerman doing the first set. He sounded very nice
and was playing a "The Martin" tenor, probably an early to mid fifties
vintage. I was wondering what happened to Conn he used to play.
RC
Toby
I think you pad tone tester is brilliant, and what a lot of work to go
through to make it I suspect. If you now want to take your testing one step
farther (if you feel that it is necessary) you could do the kind of
double-blind testing that Coltman did--have players try it with your
different racks of pads in a situation (like total darkness) in which they
can't see which kind of pad is mounted. Have them then try to identify the
same pad type in that way in multiple trials. Listeners could be present and
they could try to identify the pad types by sound in the same way. But the
listeners' test should probably be conducted at the same time as the
player's test so that there is no possible bias on the part of the
player--s/he could blow the "pad tester" differently depending on the pad
type if s/he knew which was which.
For the record I'm sure that your pads could well make a discernable
difference, and I like the idea of magnets which allow you to have smooth
surfaces instead of screws but I wonder about extra weight (two magnets must
weigh more than a screw) and the security of the magnetic bond (can't the
pads be shifted in the cups accidentally?)
Finally, any plans to make your pads available for open hole keys?
Toby
My guess is that anything that makes any part of the interior of the bore
smoother is going to be advantageous, because it will reduce thermal losses
due to friction. There is something called the "boundary effect" in which
air molecules near the walls are slowed buy the wall material. Rough walls
slow them down more, which means basically a "deader" response and the need
to pump more air into the horn to keep the sound going. I'm not sure that it
would mean "brighter" tone, as that has more to do with bore shape issues.
One caveat is that the boundary effect only operates at a distance of about
.1mm (if I remember correctly) from the wall, so it is more a concern with
narrow bored instruments, which the sax is certainly not.
Toby
"PT" <petet...@noreply.com> wrote in message
news:BD501EA6.9376%petet...@noreply.com...
> On (23/8/04 7:20 pm) "jim" wrote the following:
>
> > Abbedd said:
> >
> >
> > "Jim Are your scientific studies published in a book? If not you are
> > out of luck here?"
> >
> > Abbedd, please obtain a copy of "Musical Instrument Technology" Issue
> > 23 (call 425 413 4343)
> >
> > Also "Flute Talk" Feb 2003 (Gold plated flute pad article).
> >
> > Also "The Flutist Quarterly" vol 27 #2 winter 2002 (high tech flute
> > pads article)
> >
> > Jim said: "John Coltman also made some scientific tests that showed
> > that pad material makes a tone difference (beyond just sealing) and my
> > pads came out glowing in that article", yes this is shameless
> > promotion mixed in with sceintific approach but I'll do whatever it
> > takes to rattle some cages and wake people up. The Gold plated pads
> > are going well with pro flutists but horn players are still sitting on
> > the sidelines just wondering and that is very frustrating for me.
>
> Has it occurred to you that there may be a very basic difference between
> flautists and saxophone players? Maybe I'm wrong, but in my experience
> flautists are usually after "bright" and "loud" which is fair enough, the
> flute is a quiet instrument in the lower registers and quite low on
> overtones. I swap headjoints on my flute depending on the sound I want,
> there is a big difference between the original wooden head and a custom
> solid silver.
>
> Saxophone players on the other hand are often after different sounds, but
> not necessarily bright. "Bright" is offered by mouthpiece manufacturers
via
> baffles, thinner rails, smaller chamber size, material etc. Many
> saxophonists are after dark, mellow, warm and along with mouthpieces to do
> this there are also reflectors and ligatures (although my experience of
what
> ligatures do is more "buzzy" then "bright" but that's another story).
>
> I'm very interested in your innovations, I think you are on difficult
> ground though if you are talking about improvements that are aesthetic
> rather than scientific. I think we all know that pads can make a
difference
> to the sound, nobody is disputing that. I'd just love the chance to try
them
> out (your saxophones too), rather than rely on science - and I don't need
to
> see it in a moldy (sic) book - which can never tell me whether I will
> actually like the change in sound. Trying a flute won't tell me anything
> about the saxophone.
>
> <snip>
>
> > If "scientists" want a definitive answer about materials and tone
> > then I can't think of a better way than the flute head joint testing
> > technique. If they want a controlled test performed to their
> > particulars, they can do it anyway they want. Then they can write it
> > down in a book and confirm what so many players already know.
>
> Sorry, I don't think scientists will ever be able to say what sounds
better.
> Players can. Or am I missing the point here?
>
>
> Best regards
>
> Pete Thomas
>
> "Not enough tension can create too much tension"
>
> ***********
> On-line saxophone exercises, composition and jazz theory courses
> www.petethomas.co.uk
> ***********
> Saxophone Instruction DVD
> http://www.dvdsource.co.uk/products/13001595
> ***********
> To reply privately please use the link on my site.
>
>
P. Tung
(It is good to be able to laugh about awfulness, fo shizzle)
"Toby" <zdft...@ggol.com> wrote in message
news:cggo2b$fcs$1...@newsflood.tokyo.att.ne.jp...
P. Tung
Martin, and I have no idea why in particular. Only that on both alto and
tenor a kind of medium sized brown plastic (say 2/3 the diameter of the
tonehole) seems to give a really nice, balanced tone & response.
OTOH, worth mentioning, the only time I really thought, "Oh, man, I may have
gone a tad too far on this one," was when I put very oversized brown plastic
in a Handcraft tenor; the new owner of that horn has been very happy with
it, & fell in step with it very immediately, but for me it was too
responsive in a way. On the other hand, his tone is darker than mine,
inherently, and probably that is why that horn's set-up was perfect for him
and maybe just a tad more than was right for me; i.e. it was in balance with
his body & airstream & oral cavity, etc.. We like a similar tone (that
Martin's new owner and myself), in the end, but tend to like opposite sorts
of mpcs as well, I think, for that same reason.
Just fodder for further ruminating, in case it's at all useful.
"Toby" <zdft...@ggol.com> wrote in message
news:cggnt6$f0i$1...@newsflood.tokyo.att.ne.jp...
P. Tung
"Robert Steinberg" <midi...@bellnotnorth.net> wrote in message
news:2004082417...@host-216-76-180-36.sua.bellsouth.net...
> P. Tung <checksite...@nobspaaam.justsaxes.com> wrote:
>
> > I have not
> > done a whole horn with just center rivet using the pads that I like, so
when
> > I compare "before" and "after" (tightening up "before" to playtest) it
is
> > always sort of apples and oranges - or maybe more like Grimes Golden and
> > Granny Smith, I dunno.
>
> I did my 1920 Martin tenor with rivet pads out of curiosity and looking
> for the "period" effect. I was expecting the pads to warm up the sound
> of this old powerhouse. The results, while totally inconclusive, gave me
> the impression that for the most part there is not a dramatic difference
> until you hit the bell keys which are noticable warmer than....
Honestly, where I notice it most is in (speed of) response, but again that
is always on a horn *before* I overhaul it, or one on which I have performed
only repairs (for example a horn that is just in for service and which has
only rivet pads in it).
After working on enough horns, you find out that there really are not that
many horns that have truly horrible response, when they are tight. The only
time I have really felt like a horn was very sluggish, and I just could not
get it to giddyap, was when I was up against a full complement of
overstuffed, old, mushy pads with either center rivet or plain leather.
It's true: it might not have been the mushy pad at all that was responsible
for that sluggish response, in any of these cases, but it seemed to be, and
overhauling (in the cases where I did) with a more modern set-up has always
seemed to me to solve the problem.
Toby
polymers--that I'll bet would do a hell of a job sealing a tonehole. You're
right that the ideal would be to eliminate tonehole chimneys completely and
seal directly on the body--you'd get rid of all that extra compliance in the
bore that screws up the partials. It'd be a sweet horn for sure.
You'd have to engineer keys with just the right curvature, though, and have
a flexible but resilient pad that had a surface that was smooth but not too
hard so as to be able to seal well.
Let's see how long it takes.
Toby
"Saxtroll" <saxt...@saxtrolls.net> wrote in message
news:4NedncmXbIf...@comcast.com...
> > On the one hand, my first saxophone teacher, also excellent
repairperson,
> > had the opinion that the "perfect saxophone" would be one without
> toneholes
> > (one continuous expanse of brass, other than the mpc), but that could
play
> > all the same pitches (not really possible), so his idea was that the
ideal
> > pad would be made of brass or a metal that reacted like brass. I guess
if
> > you extend this "theory," then the shape and volume that would be ideal
> for
> > the pad/resonator would be one that most closely (acoustically)
> > approximated - in concert with the tonehole chimney - the characterstics
> > that the area would have had were there no tonehole there. (In
practice,
> > this probably doesn't work, fwiw, because the tonehole placement is
> probably
> > influenced in the first place, designwise, by trial and error
experiments
> > with a flat or slightly convex surface - a pad that gives when pressed
to
> > the tonehole.)
>
> Palo, that is very interesting. I guess if we ever come up with a material
> that exhibits both high speed conformity (for sealing) AND brass-like
> acoustics (on the surface) then we would be getting close to such an
ideal.
> It would have to be durable and low mass. If the conformity could be done
in
> three dimensions, we could even be rid of tonehole chimneys.
>
> I'm imagining a bistable liquid/solid metal material that has a surface
> tension so low that it practically seals itself on contact with the
> tonehole. Such a thing could exist in a future which seems to come faster
> every year.
>
> It's a sci-fi fantasy but worth keeping a watchful eye on materials
science
> for the betterment of our art. With "critical path" type knowledge
> acceleration, we can look to our imaginations a little more than we used
to.
>
> ("Critical Path" is in reference to the life and work of Buckminster
Fuller
> for those in the know...)
>
> Thanks for the brain tickle, folks.
>
> -Saxtroll (I am a "Toby" also so even though it's not me, my eyes get big
> when I see the name.)
>
>
Glenn Spiegel
(Though I've never actually seen one of the horns) His idea of a ball
joint on top of the keycup to assure seating was interesting, too.
I've sometimes wondered, though, why we don't see slightly conical
pads--something like faucet washers--that might improve seating and
sound dispersion as well.
Eliminating tonehole chimneys would be quite an engineering feat. The
pads would have to have one radius of curvature at the top and another
at the bottom.
Glenn
P. Tung
"Glenn Spiegel" <effective...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:83e27aa7.04082...@posting.google.com...
> We've already seen plastic sealers on Wolf Codera's "Reso-blades."
> (Though I've never actually seen one of the horns) His idea of a ball
> joint on top of the keycup to assure seating was interesting, too.
It's a cool design, and it works. The only bad thing about it is the metal
of the sealing "cups" (domes, really) is fairly thin, and the surfaces can
be damaged relatively easily. Not a big deal if your toneholes are really
true, and if (big if, here) the domes can be purchased easily.
Steve Marshall
"MrWitworth" <mrwit...@aol.com> wrote
Maybe he prefers Conns to Selmers, but prefers Martins to Conns ?
There are a lot of similarities between Martins and Conns. The keywork can
be very similar. I sometimes wonder if they were in collaboration or
something.
Steve M
Paul Lindemeyer
Last I heard Bob played everything. I think he wrote that he sticks
with VIs for the money gigs and only uses the Conns for "out" music.
-P.
Toby
It apparently uses gaskets on the toneholes and no pads. In addition there
are no springs--magnets are used instead. A good idea methinks, but I wonder
about the feel since magnetic force is an exponential function of distance
and spring torsion has got to be pretty linear.
Toby
Paul Lindemeyer
> "Toby" <zdft...@ggol.com> wrote
>
>> Theories are generally published with substantiating
>> evidence in the form of research, and then subject to peer review, where
>> others qualified in the field look for possible flaws in the reasoning or
>> the research before accepting (or rejecting with qualifying reasons given)
>> the theory and/or the research.
>>
>> Otherwise anyone could claim anything without having to show that it is
>> true.
>
> Thank you - yes, exactly.
POST PROOF OR RETRACT!!1!
<teehee> -P.
Toby
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review
Toby
"Paul Lindemeyer" <pa...@lindemeyer.conn> wrote in message
news:2004082519192263534%paul@lindemeyerconn...
Toby
>
> Eliminating tonehole chimneys would be quite an engineering feat. The
> pads would have to have one radius of curvature at the top and another
> at the bottom.
True, but OTOH all you would need is a keyplate (as opposed to a keycup)
that duplicates the curvature of the body, with a flexible pad/gasket that
conforms to the surface. You could have that plate centrally mounted on a
pivot with three arms extending out over the plate with setscrews--which
would take the place of shims. Or you could have the pad/gasket along the
lines of an O-ring that left the better part of the keyplate metal
exposed--like a resonator.
Maybe I'm offbase here in terms of the manufacturing difficulty, but I don't
see it as a big problem to build.
Of course there is an informal law about these things that says that a new
design has to be ten times better than the old design before people will go
to the expense and trouble of building it and reinvesting by buying new gear
to replace the old. This worked for CDs vs. LPs, but I doubt it would work
here...
Toby
Toby
Toby
Otherwise we'd all be dead...
Toby
"P. Tung" <checksite...@nobspaaam.justsaxes.com> wrote in message
news:ReXWc.18690$cx.1...@bignews4.bellsouth.net...
P. Tung
> Glenn wrote...
> >
> > Eliminating tonehole chimneys would be quite an engineering feat. The
> > pads would have to have one radius of curvature at the top and another
> > at the bottom.
>
> True, but OTOH all you would need is a keyplate (as opposed to a keycup)
> that duplicates the curvature of the body, with a flexible pad/gasket that
> conforms to the surface. You could have that plate centrally mounted on a
> pivot with three arms extending out over the plate with setscrews--which
> would take the place of shims. Or you could have the pad/gasket along the
> lines of an O-ring that left the better part of the keyplate metal
> exposed--like a resonator.
>
> Maybe I'm offbase here in terms of the manufacturing difficulty, but I
don't
> see it as a big problem to build.
Alot harder to regulate, tho. Truing a cup is pretty easy. Truing an
arched cup would require a whole set of dies, in a way, to approach the ease
of repairing a cup that is flat (which can be in part trued on a flat anvil
or other flat surface).
The engineering probably would not be that big a deal, but the upkeep would
be challenging, I think.
Steve Marshall
"ansermetniac" <anserm...@hotmail.com> wrote
> >Did you read this? From the preface (it was PDF so I can't cut and
paste)
> >..... the article says there is no discernable difference in sound
between a
> >silver flute, a heavy copper flute, and a wood flute. None whatsoever.
The
> >'published article' seems to contradict everything you are saying.
>
> Is that what it said? ROFLMAO. That is science?
The critical thing is whether the airstream resonance can excite the body
enough to have an influence on the air column. In flutes it would seem that
this doesn't happen - or at least not with many players. Some players will
be able to produce a difference in sound but when you compare results with
other players it's considered too small a difference to count.
Where the body material does vibrate well it certain affects the air column
and the sound produced. I don't think anyone disputes the influence that a
violin body has over the sound. It vibrates well. Flutes don't.
Steve M
Steve Marshall
"Toby" <zdft...@ggol.com> wrote
> That was in support of my point that materials don't make a difference...
... to flutes !
It is widely acknowledged in the flute world since Boehm et al popularised
metal flutes understanding how the sound was produced. Flute Players would
compare old design wooden flutes to new design metal ones and conclude that
the material made the difference in sound whereas it was the design of bore
and toneholes.
Steve M
Toby
Steve wrote...
> Where the body material does vibrate well it certain affects the air
column
> and the sound produced. I don't think anyone disputes the influence that a
> violin body has over the sound. It vibrates well. Flutes don't.
By the same token neither do sax bodies.
Toby
Toby
I'm not sure I understand what you are getting at. But in terms of saxes the
same physics appy as to flutes. The body walls do not vibrate appreciably as
compared to the vibration of the air column inside the instrument. In
idiophonic instruments like the violin and the guitar it is largely the
vibration of the body which couples with the motion of the exciter (string
in these cases). Essentially the body of a violin or guitar is the analogue
of the vibrating air column in a woodwind (ignoring for the moment the
contribution of the mass of air trapped inside the body which also is set
into motion by the vibration of the walls).
In a woodwind the walls of the body serve only to define the mass of air
which is set in motion by coupling with the exciter (reed or air reed). The
walls are important only in that they contain the air column that vibrates.
In both sax and flute.
Toby
ansermetniac
1) Take peice off horn. Play. Note db level
2) Put piece back on horn. Play. Note db level
If the body did not vibrate, how did it amplify the sound coming out
of the piece?
Abbedd
>
______________
E.A.F.E.
Glenn Spiegel
vibrate significantly. You can feel them vibrate with your fingers.
The question to be resolved is whether the horn's vibration has enough
effect on the air column to change the sound. This might be easy to
test in principle by experiments similar to the one you cite with
flutes, but, in practice, it's probably almost impossible to make two
horns out of different materials that are close enough to identical.
One possibility, though, would be to find two horns that sound
extremely similar then wrap one of them in a bunch of material that
would dampen vibrations and see if it sounds different.
I suspect that if you had 10 new Yamahas in front of you, for example,
you could find two that you couldn't tell apart. You could then tape
one up to reduce body vibrations and do some blind testing. (Double
blind would be tough though, since the damped one would feel
different. Maybe you'd have to play it with thick gloves.) Anyone have
two identical saxes?
In the meantime, in the spirit of voodoo, I prefer to remember Dumbo
and "magic" feather. I know if I get a solid silver/gold
plated/titanium-boron composite horn, or maybe a magic mouthpiece,
I'll play better. Now if I can just convince my wife...
Glenn
David Beecroft
3) play into a pillow, note the volume level
4) play into a large very reflective room, note the volume level.
I don't know if the room vibrates but I could sure tell you which version I would prefer if I had a headache.
For that matter, note the quality of the sound in different spaces. Does a saxophone make a concert hall "vibrate"?, um, no but the surface materials and their density sure have a significant effect on the perceived tone colour.
If the vibration energy left the saxophone or for that matter, any wind instrument quickly I could believe the argument that material doesn't effect the sound but, what ever is happening inside of a wind instrument is happening for a relatively long time when measured against the speed of sound. I would think that the energies at work (resonating, reflecting sound pressure waves) have (relatively speaking) enough time to interact with the materials that contain them to significantly alter or colour the perceived tone quality.
It ain't science but it works for me.
D.
http://www.beecroft.de
(If you are not interested in musical ideas for free then you can also buy something)
Steve Marshall
"Toby" <zdft...@ggol.com> wrote
> I'm not sure I understand what you are getting at. But in terms of saxes
the
> same physics appy as to flutes. The body walls do not vibrate appreciably
as
> compared to the vibration of the air column inside the instrument. In
> idiophonic instruments like the violin and the guitar it is largely the
> vibration of the body which couples with the motion of the exciter (string
> in these cases). Essentially the body of a violin or guitar is the
analogue
> of the vibrating air column in a woodwind (ignoring for the moment the
> contribution of the mass of air trapped inside the body which also is set
> into motion by the vibration of the walls).
The air mass is critical. It means a helmholtz resonance is formed. If the
'f' holes are smooth you don't get a helmholtz resonance and the body
doesn't act as a soundbox amplifier.
> In a woodwind the walls of the body serve only to define the mass of air
> which is set in motion by coupling with the exciter (reed or air reed).
The
> walls are important only in that they contain the air column that
vibrates.
> In both sax and flute.
I would agree, but I think under certain conditions a player can cause the
body of a sax to vibrate enough to alter the air column tone precisely
because they are serving to define the mass of air.
Under 'normal playing conditions' I don't think the walls move anywhere near
enough to effect the sound.
Steve M
Steve Marshall
"ansermetniac" <anserm...@hotmail.com> wrote
> 1) Take peice off horn. Play. Note db level
> 2) Put piece back on horn. Play. Note db level
>
> If the body did not vibrate, how did it amplify the sound coming out
> of the piece?
In order to get more sound you need to move more air. Sound is air
vibration.
On a piano you have a big plank of wood to which the stings are connected.
When it vibrates it vibrates the wood which shift a large amount of air.
When you stick a MP on the end of a sax it allows for the bulk of air inside
to be set in motion. It isn't the body that is caused to vibrate passing the
vibration on to the air, but the reverse.
Steve M
ansermetniac
In the interest of diplomacy---no comment.
Abbedd
______________
E.A.F.E.
Craig Rasband
>
> ...in terms of saxes> the> > same physics appy as to flutes. The body
walls do not vibrate appreciably> as> > compared to the vibration of the
air column inside the instrument.
Well, the body vibrates enough to activate one of those electronic
tuners that clamp into a music lyre, and the air is in intimate contact
with the sax body. To effect the higher frequencies, the vibrations
wouldn't have to be *large*, since the air motion of those higher
frequencies is small anyway. I'll bet if you put a contact (piezo) mike
on the bell of a sax, you'd get a pretty decent signal out of it (I'll
have to try that).
If the air inside the saxophone is what causes the body to vibrate
(and I'm sure it is), then consider this: When you play a solid body
guitar, the amount of vibration you feel with your fingers (when
touching the body) doesn't seem any stronger than what you feel on the
sax; but the strings cause the body to vibrate, and the body in turn has
a tremendous influence on the way the strings vibrate. Any electric
guitar (or bass) player will tell you that changing the kind of wood the
instrument is made of has a major influence on the sound you get out of
the pickups. These vibrations of the body aren't big, but they're big
*enough*.
It also seems to me, somewhat intuitively I guess, that the louder
you play the saxophone, and/or the larger the saxophone, the more the
vibrations of the body would influence the vibrations of the air column.
Just some thoughts,
Craig Rasband
"Swing is one of jazz's great gifts to humanity.
Don't screw it up." - John Goldsby
Toby
with testing. This translates to about .01% of the vibration of the air
column or a contribution to the overall resonance of the system of about -40
dB.
Now different materials might vibrate differently, but the difference is
certainly not going to be that full 1 micrometer, so the actual differential
attributable to materials is going to be way under that figure of .01%, I'll
take a wild guess and say 1/10 of that--about 1/100,000 the vibrational
contribution of the air column to the system total.
Just to put it all in perspective....
Toby
"Glenn Spiegel" <effective...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:83e27aa7.04082...@posting.google.com...
Toby
as a function of the vibration of the air column is non-linear?
Have a look at my answer to Glenn above.
Toby
"Steve Marshall" <s...@atmosBlockA.plus.com> wrote in message
news:412fc306$0$48035$ed26...@ptn-nntp-reader03.plus.net...
Toby
I answered this in my post to Abbedd. The strings of a guitar are in much
more of a feedback loop with the body--whether it be solid or
hollow--because the strings are anchored at both ends of the instrument and
are affected by body vibrations both at the bridge and up the neck at the
nut. Therefore any vibrations in the body are going to affect the mode of
the strings' vibrations. Also the string's resonant frequency is the
sounding frequency.
The "exciting mechanism" of the sax--the reed--is unaffected by body
vibrations (for the most part) because it is short, stiff and only anchored
at one end. That's why you can't build a tremolo bar on a sax...
The fact that you can feel vibration in the metal as you play is no proof
that it affects the vibration of the air column significantly. As I
mentioned the vibratory contribution of the body to the overall radiation of
sound is on the order of 1/10000. Can you hear a whisper when a jet plane is
taking off next to you?
Counterintuitive or not, if you read the literature you will see that there
is little doubt that the small vibrations of the body of the sax do not
affect the sound.
Toby
"Craig Rasband" <jas...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:XbRXc.592$w%6....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
Toby
Apologies if it appears twice, which it undoubtedly will eventually...
Hi Abbedd,
If you take the piece off the horn and play it, it creates a little standing
wave within the piece which radiates out into the air. Since the air outside
the mpc is basically a huge ocean it just radiates out in all directions and
disperses out there.
If you now put the piece on the horn that little standing wave within the
mpc couples with the air inside the horn tube, and now that starts vibrating
in sympathy. Now that standing wave is much larger when it radiates out of
the horn into the surrounding ocean of air.
The formation of that standing wave doesn't depend on the vibration of the
body, it depends on the vibration of the air inside it.
This is of course a different story than a violin, or better yet take a
banjo. In a banjo the amplification of the sound of the string depends in
large part on the banjo drumhead, which vibrates in sympathy with the
string, reinforces it and radiates that vibration into the open air like a
speaker cone does. In this case the head is analogous to the air inside the
sax--it is what couples with the exciter and reinforces (and amplifies) its
vibration.
The sound of the banjo is not dependent (much) on the vibration of the
wooden or metal "pot" across which the head is stretched. The pot is, in
fact, analogous to the sax body--it is the structure that supports the
vibrating mechanism.
To be precise, I should point out that with the banjo the materials make
more of a difference than with the sax, because the small vibrations set up
in the body and the neck do feed back into the string. In the sax the very
small vibrations of the body and mpc do not effectively feed back into the
reed, which is anchored at only one end, and is much shorter and stiffer.
As a hi-fi guy take the case of a bass reflex woofer (not an acoustic
suspension type such as in your ARs, which is a different story.) Hook it up
to your amp freestanding--without an enclosure--and the sound is going to be
very poor. Now put it in a tuned enclosure with the correct port size and
zingo! you shake the walls. But it is not the box that is vibrating--in fact
speaker designers go to pains to make sure that the box itself does not
vibrate. It is the air in the enclosure coupling with the vibrations of the
cone, then radiating out through the port that is making the difference.
There are those who argue that the very minute differences in the vibrations
in the walls of a woodwind (based on what it is made of) are enough to make
an important difference in response and sound to players, who are very
sensitive to such matters. Actually I am an agnostic on that point. It may
be so, but unfortunately no one has really been able to untangle the effects
of things that definitely do make a difference (notably bore geometry) from
the materials question for instruments as complex as the sax. All the
evidence points to little, if any difference, but that issue is far from
resolved. Certainly the effect is very slight compared to other factors.
FWIW. That's how I understand the situation.
Toby
"ansermetniac" <anserm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:vlbui059srg5djsmf...@4ax.com...
Toby
You are getting a few things mixed up, i.e. what happens to the vibration
after it is radiated out of the horn vs. what is happening inside the horn.
Outside the horn reflection of the sound waves becomes an important issue;
this involves numerous factors, including differential absorption, decay
time, and positive and negative reinforcement of the sound being radiated
out of the horn, to name only a few things.
Inside the horn you have an air column pulsing in a standing wave. There's
not a lot of echoing going on in there, and I guarantee you that you
wouldn't want to be inside if you had a headache. You do get some
reflections that travel back up the tube and have some effect, but those are
due to places where there is an interface into the open air and/or edges,
such as at toneholes and the bell.
All of this would be clearer if you had a wave generator such as are used to
demonstrate the effects of waves in high school physics.
The sound waves do leave the instrument immediately, and are continually
regenerated by the player's air pressure. Otherwise it would be impossible
to play staccato, right? You stop blowing, the sound stops, it doesn't die
away slowly inside the horn.
And again, the vibrational energy contributed to the whole system by the
vibrating walls is miniscule. How is that going to affect anything? The
surface smoothness of the walls will affect the sound, but given a circular
cross section of sufficient rigidity the wall materials' contribution to the
sound is nil.
You guys are free to believe anything you want, that doesn't make it true.
All the Ptolemaics in the world didn't stop the earth from circling the sun,
instead of vice-versa.
Toby
"David Beecroft" <ma...@beecroft.de> wrote in message
news:412F9797...@beecroft.de...
Toby
>
> The air mass is critical. It means a helmholtz resonance is formed. If the
> 'f' holes are smooth you don't get a helmholtz resonance and the body
> doesn't act as a soundbox amplifier.
>
of the string vibration via body resonance.
Toby
Noah Comprende
The body provides an air column of proper dimensions to support
reinforcement of the reed vibrating at a certain frequency. The metal
of the horn doesn't have to expand or contract (vibrate) at all in
order to support this resonance.
Regards,
Noah
> ______________
> E.A.F.E.
Toby
Toby
"Noah Comprende" <xml...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:e6e80746.04082...@posting.google.com...
David Beecroft
Can you describe for me your conception of the term "standing wave"?
Is there really a difference between a room and an instrument body,
other than size and that the room doesn't couple so directly to the
generator of sound waves?
Thanx.
D.
Toby
I'll give it a shot.
Picture a string that is under tension and anchored at both ends. Pluck it
and it vibrates. The ends don't move, obviously, since they are anchored.
The center moves the most. The tension on the string changes the most at the
two ends, even though they move the least. The tension changes the least at
the midpoint, and it moves the most. As the string passes the midpoint
tension builds up at the ends, and eventually stop the motion of the string
in one direction and accelerate it in the opposite direction, until the same
thing happens at the other side, etc. etc. This is a basic standing wave,
and it will continue indefinitely as long as enough energy is supplied to
make up for the losses that happen (due to friction and thermal losses due
to flexing in the string, etc.)--for example with a bow.
Essentially the air column in a sax behaves the same way, except that the
picture is the opposite. The maximum pressure variation is at the center of
the tube, and the least pressure variation (and the most variation of the
air displacement) is at the bell end and the mpc end.
When you blow the horn and get it to sound the air moves sort of like a
string moves--if you can picture the string being anchored in the center and
both ends moving. You get rhythmic compression waves pulsing and moving air
at the open end. The air isn't flowing, it is vibrating back and forth
inside the tube at the frequency of the note being played. Where it meets
open air the rhythmic "puffs" of air from the horn are radiated out into the
atmosphere. But once they get out there they are not being regenerated, they
just die away, in a manner depending on reflection from and absorption by
near objects.
Inside the horn the wave is constantly being re-energized by another pulse
from the reed at the right time, so it continues to be repropagated. This is
dependent on the force of the player's air making up for losses of energy
due to radiation into the open air and friction and inertia and mechanical
losses in the reed. If the player stops blowing hard enough the wave quickly
loses power.
The air does not "flow" in the horn--basically the molecules are in there
moving back and forth. If you want a little empirical test of this take your
mpc and blow fairly hard without making the reed vibrate. Hold it about 3"
from the palm of your hand. You'll feel the air flow very clearly. Now
squeeze your embouchure enough to make the reed sound and you will notice an
immediate drop in the airflow, because now you are feeling the little pulses
pushing the air towards your hand, instead of a linear flow.
It's much more complicated than that, though.
Here is a good place to start with this:
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/saxacoustics.html#pipe
It explains it all much better and more correctly than I can.
Toby
"David Beecroft" <ma...@beecroft.de> wrote in message
news:4130520A...@beecroft.de...
Craig Rasband
> I answered this in my post to Abbedd.
Sorry, I missed that.
> The strings of a guitar are in much
> more of a feedback loop with the body--whether it be solid or
> hollow--because the strings are anchored at both ends of the
instrument and
> are affected by body vibrations both at the bridge and up the neck at
the
> nut. Therefore any vibrations in the body are going to affect the mode
of
> the strings' vibrations. Also the string's resonant frequency is the
> sounding frequency.
Okay, you've just about got me convinced, but to continue with the
analogy: If the strings are in contact with the body at both ends, the
air column is *anchored* throughout its length; wouldn't that make a
difference?
> The "exciting mechanism" of the sax--the reed--is unaffected by body
> vibrations (for the most part) because it is short, stiff and only
anchored
> at one end. That's why you can't build a tremolo bar on a sax...
I'm not sure I agree with this -- well, yes, unaffected by the body
vibrations, but not unaffected by the air column vibrations. And
technically, isn't the *tremolo* bar on a guitar actually a *vibrato*
bar? Which is what my jaw amounts to on a saxophone, anyway, right?
> The fact that you can feel vibration in the metal as you play is no
proof
> that it affects the vibration of the air column significantly. As I
> mentioned the vibratory contribution of the body to the overall
radiation of
> sound is on the order of 1/10000. Can you hear a whisper when a jet
plane is
> taking off next to you?
I'm not sure if those numbers match, but like I said, you almost
have me convinced.
> Counterintuitive or not, if you read the literature you will see that
there
> is little doubt that the small vibrations of the body of the sax do
not
> affect the sound.
Okay, if you're right, then lets go with this: I happen to love
Ornette's sound on "The Shape of Jazz to Come" and his other two first
albums -- sounds like a saxophone to me. So what say we take advantage
of today's technology and make a carbon fiber saxophone -- or whatever
materials would work best. Seems to me we could mass produce them
cheaper, with more consistency -- and lighter! Sheesh, I'd love to have
a tenor saxophone that wouldn't curve this aging spine. But maybe this
has already been covered. Sorry, I don't have time to visit this list
as often as I would like to.
Craig Rasband
Does a
> saxophone make a concert hall "vibrate"?, um, no but the surface
materials
> and their density sure have a significant effect on the perceived tone
> colour.
>
> If the vibration energy left the saxophone or for that matter, any
wind
> instrument quickly I could believe the argument that material doesn't
effect
> the sound but, what ever is happening inside of a wind instrument is
> happening for a relatively long time when measured against the speed
of
> sound. I would think that the energies at work (resonating, reflecting
sound
> pressure waves) have (relatively speaking) enough time to interact
with the
> materials that contain them to significantly alter or colour the
perceived
> tone quality.
>
> It ain't science but it works for me.
Seems to work for me, too.
Toby
> Okay, you've just about got me convinced, but to continue with the
> analogy: If the strings are in contact with the body at both ends, the
> air column is *anchored* throughout its length; wouldn't that make a
> difference?
Actually the air column is the opposite of a string: the pressure node is in
the middle and the displacement nodes are at the ends--it's the other way
around with a string.
>
>> The "exciting mechanism" of the sax--the reed--is unaffected by body
>> vibrations (for the most part) because it is short, stiff and only
> anchored
>> at one end. That's why you can't build a tremolo bar on a sax...
>
> I'm not sure I agree with this -- well, yes, unaffected by the body
> vibrations, but not unaffected by the air column vibrations. And
> technically, isn't the *tremolo* bar on a guitar actually a *vibrato*
> bar? Which is what my jaw amounts to on a saxophone, anyway, right?
The reed is coupled with the air column vibrations--it's real resonant
frequency is much higher--like around a squeak. Damping the reed with your
jaw of course makes a difference. You're not suggesting that the vibrations
of the body of the sax travel through your body and affect the reed through
your jaw are you? ;-)
The point is--vibrato bar or tremolo bar or whatever you want to call it--is
part of a quasi-closed interactive system that consists of the strings and
everything that supports them. Your embouchure on the sax isn't part of a
closed system--it's independent of the sax body.
>
>> The fact that you can feel vibration in the metal as you play is no
> proof
>> that it affects the vibration of the air column significantly. As I
>> mentioned the vibratory contribution of the body to the overall
> radiation of
>> sound is on the order of 1/10000. Can you hear a whisper when a jet
> plane is
>> taking off next to you?
>
> I'm not sure if those numbers match, but like I said, you almost
> have me convinced.
No, actually they don't match. More like whispering at five feet compared to
a power mower...
>
>> Counterintuitive or not, if you read the literature you will see that
> there
>> is little doubt that the small vibrations of the body of the sax do
> not
>> affect the sound.
>
> Okay, if you're right, then lets go with this: I happen to love
> Ornette's sound on "The Shape of Jazz to Come" and his other two first
> albums -- sounds like a saxophone to me. So what say we take advantage
> of today's technology and make a carbon fiber saxophone -- or whatever
> materials would work best. Seems to me we could mass produce them
> cheaper, with more consistency -- and lighter! Sheesh, I'd love to have
> a tenor saxophone that wouldn't curve this aging spine. But maybe this
> has already been covered. Sorry, I don't have time to visit this list
> as often as I would like to.
Carbon fiber is notoriously hard to work with, I thought. But
professional-grade carbon fiber flutes are being built. If you could get the
right conical shape it should work just dandy for a sax.
Toby
Toby
Toby
"ansermetniac" <anserm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:vlbui059srg5djsmf...@4ax.com...
Noah Comprende
did vibrate to any great extent it would probably not sound too good
-- and even then it would only be reinforcing certain modes and not
others leading to uneven response. Give me a carbon-fiber epoxy
composite sax any day. :-)
Noah
"Toby" <kymar...@ybb.ne.jpp> wrote in message news:<41301b6c$0$2354$45be...@newscene.com>...
Robert
proves or disproves the effect (if any) of the material altering the
sound of a musical instrument.
I think Toby has explained pretty well (without mathematics) how the air
column generates the sound and how it couples to the air. The problem
of extending this to vibration of the body is that the body is made of a
different material than the vibrating medium (air). Thus, the speed of
sound in the body material is faster than the speed of sound in the air.
The body vibrations are therefore supersonic. It is very difficult to
analyze how these supersonic vibrations radiate, since they are very
dependent upon shape as well as material. From what is known about
radiating bodies, as a rule, some supersonic vibrations may be large but
don't couple at all with air while others are magnified. To complicate
matters still more, it is not the physical modes of vibration that
determine the coupling but the "wave number" -- a mathematical
transformation of the vibrations.
(As an aside remark, let me explain the meaning of acoustical "modes."
Two of the simplest modes are the diameter of the tube expands and
contracts and the length of the tube expands and contacts. Additional
modes may be shaped like a cookie-cutter flower in the circumference of
the tube, which may rotate with time; and vibrations that travel down
the length the tube. There are an amazing number of these modes
existing even in an "incompressible" material.)
For these reasons, I believe the question can be settled only by
measurement because there is no resource for accurately modeling and
anaylzing the shape pertaining to a saxophone. There is, however, a
body of work analyzing the vibration of a cylinder immersed in a fluid,
and other simple shapes.
Steve Marshall
"ansermetniac" <anserm...@hotmail.com> wrote
> In the interest of diplomacy---no comment.
Are you seriously trying to suggest that the purpose of the MP is to vibrate
the sax body ?
Are you saying the body excites the air column rather than the air column
vibrations cause some vibration inthe sax ?
Steve M
ansermetniac
<s...@atmosBlockA.plus.com> wrote:
>
>"ansermetniac" <anserm...@hotmail.com> wrote
>
>> In the interest of diplomacy---no comment.
>
>Are you seriously trying to suggest that the purpose of the MP is to vibrate
>the sax body ?
No I did not say that at all
>
>Are you saying the body excites the air column rather than the air column
>vibrations cause some vibration inthe sax ?
No I did not say that either
I did not say anything.
Two quotes are relevant here
"aqua en boca"
Toscanini
"No comment until the time limit is up"
Superman(George Reeves)
Abbedd
>
>Steve M
>
______________
E.A.F.E.
Steve Marshall
"Toby" <kymar...@ybb.ne.jpp> wrote
> And what conditions would those be?
That's a bit difficult to say. There's a sort of sweet spot you can hit if
you get the right pressure and airstream which can result in a better tone -
but it doesn't work on all saxes so it could be dependant on wall thickness
or tonehole positions or something that I'm not really aware of.
>Do you think the vibration of the walls
> as a function of the vibration of the air column is non-linear?
I think that the wall vibration is too small to have an audible effect - but
that it does have an effect. I think however that it is possible for a
player to hit a 'sweet-spot' that makes the body vibration strong enough to
have an effect on tone.
I think that silver (for example) has the potential to produce a brighter
tone than brass but if it is too thick it won't respond, and if it isn't
pushed enough it won't make any difference. And any difference is still
small.
But I really have no evidence for this. I agree with you mostly.
Steve M
Steve Marshall
"Toby" <kymar...@ybb.ne.jpp> wrote
> Tape up the f holes and you still get a significant degree of
amplification
> of the string vibration via body resonance.
You'd still get plate resonance and I suspect you'd still get a bit of air
movement too.
Steve M
Steve Marshall
"Toby" <kymar...@ybb.ne.jpp> wrote
> Carbon fiber is notoriously hard to work with, I thought. But
> professional-grade carbon fiber flutes are being built. If you could get
the
> right conical shape it should work just dandy for a sax.
It's worth remembering the Grafton ! A plastic sax made back in the 50s.
They had problem with the strength of the plastic which meant a different
mechanism had to be developed which meant the sax wasn't too good.
As a sax it sounds - like a saxophone !
Steve M
Toby
> (As an aside remark, let me explain the meaning of acoustical "modes." Two
> of the simplest modes are the diameter of the tube expands and contracts
> and the length of the tube expands and contacts. Additional modes may be
> shaped like a cookie-cutter flower in the circumference of the tube, which
> may rotate with time; and vibrations that travel down the length the tube.
> There are an amazing number of these modes existing even in an
> "incompressible" material.)
>
> For these reasons, I believe the question can be settled only by
> measurement because there is no resource for accurately modeling and
> anaylzing the shape pertaining to a saxophone. There is, however, a body
> of work analyzing the vibration of a cylinder immersed in a fluid, and
> other simple shapes.
Here's a quote from "The Physics of Musical Instruments" by Fletcher and
Rossing:
"The tube walls influence the behavior of the vibrations of the air column
because of the viscous and thermal losses across the boundary layer....These
losses have qute significant effect on the Q-factors of the pipe resonances,
and thus on the behavior of the instrument, and vary somewhat in magnifude
depending on the smoothness of the surface. Wall materials all have thermal
capacity so much greater than air, however, that there is virtually no
difference between them on this score. Rougness effects become significant
only when the roughness itself is significant on the scale of the bourndary
layer thickness, or about 0.1mm. Most claims for difference in behavior
bewteen different wall materials are based, however upon discussions of
mechanical effects.
While the mechanical virtues and aesthetic appeal of different materials are
easily evaluated, the same is not true of their acoustical properties.
Makers and players claim to detect clear and consistent tonal differences
between otherwise similar instruments made from different materials, but
physical analysis suggests that these cliams may be illusory. This does not
mean that wall material never has any effect, and indeed demonstrations by
Miller (1909) long ago showed that the thin walls of metal pipes of squae
cross section can vibrate with appereciable amplitude and have a very large
effect on the stabiility and timbre of the sound. The sitiuation is,
however, quite different for the relatively rigid walls of typical organ
pipes and woodwind instruments.
It is easy to see why this is so. The physical quantity causing wall
vibration is the acoustic pressure in the standing wave of the air column.
This can couple to a vibration mode of the pipe walls only if there is
reasonably close agreement between the resonance frequency of the wall mode
and one of the harmonics of the air-column vibration and if the symmetry of
the wall mode is siuch that the coupling coefficient does not vanish. It is
quite easy to satisy these conditions for a pipe of rectangular cross
section, for the local 'breathing' mode, in which the pipe corss section
distorts successively from barrel to pincushion shape, can have a low
freqenncy and very low impedance if the walls are thin.
The case of a pipe of circular cross-section is entirely different, for the
breathing mode involves an actual increase in the local radius of the tube,
rather than a simple shape deformation, and therefore has a very high
resonance frequency. This is true even for thin metal tubes, and the audible
modes that cam be excited by tapping the tube wall are in fact distortional
mades in which the pipe cross section become elliptical. These could
conceivably be excited in a thin metal tube in the vicinity of a finger
hole, where the bore, and thus the pressure distribution, loses its circular
symmetry, but for typical wooden instruments the excitation coupling is
small and the mode frequency very high.
The discussion can be quantified for the strictly circular part of the bore
by considering the relative compliances associated with expansion of the
bore under pressure and with compression of the air in the tube. The ratio
is about 0.001 for even a quite thin-walled tube, so that the compliance of
the walls has virtually no effect upon the internal air modes and direct
radiation form wall vibration is very small (Backus, 1964). Even rigid walls
do, however, affect the damping of the air modes, and indeed this wall
damping predominates over radiation damping except at very high frequencies.
Details of wood grain and smoothness can affect the exact damping
coefficient, but generally the difference between one material and another
is small compared with the effects of sharp edges on finger holes, soft key
pads, or even finger tips.
The outcome of this discussion is that we are led to the view that the
choice of particular materials for the construction of wind materials is
governed not really by acoustics, but rather by considerations of ease of
fabrication, stability, feel and appearance..."
Nederveen cites a study in which deformation of the sax tube due to the air
column vibration was measured at 1 um, giving a figure of -40dB for the
ratio of the tube vibration to the air column vibration.
Toby
>
Toby
>
>
> That's a bit difficult to say. There's a sort of sweet spot you can hit if
> you get the right pressure and airstream which can result in a better
> tone -
> but it doesn't work on all saxes so it could be dependant on wall
> thickness
> or tonehole positions or something that I'm not really aware of.
The could be the result of coupling with the player's mouth and throat
resonance. Studies have shown that experienced players are able to align
these with what's going on in the instrument--a sort of secondary resonating
system that can be used to optimize the reed response.
>
>>Do you think the vibration of the walls
>> as a function of the vibration of the air column is non-linear?
>
> I think that the wall vibration is too small to have an audible effect -
> but
> that it does have an effect. I think however that it is possible for a
> player to hit a 'sweet-spot' that makes the body vibration strong enough
> to
> have an effect on tone.
> I think that silver (for example) has the potential to produce a brighter
> tone than brass but if it is too thick it won't respond, and if it isn't
> pushed enough it won't make any difference. And any difference is still
> small.
Have a look at my long quote to Robert. The research doesn't support this
view.
>
> But I really have no evidence for this. I agree with you mostly.
There are so many factors that could cause the phenomenon you mention that
it would be impossible to confirm the cause without contrilling for all the
other possibilities.
Toby
Glenn Spiegel
> FWIW sax bodies vibrate about 1 micrometer. This has been well established
> with testing. This translates to about .01% of the vibration of the air
> column or a contribution to the overall resonance of the system of about -40
> dB.
>
> Now different materials might vibrate differently, but the difference is
> certainly not going to be that full 1 micrometer, so the actual differential
> attributable to materials is going to be way under that figure of .01%, I'll
> take a wild guess and say 1/10 of that--about 1/100,000 the vibrational
> contribution of the air column to the system total.
>
> Just to put it all in perspective....
>
> Toby
>
to a jet airplane, but a normal conversation in a room where loud
music is being played. I don't think you can quite rule out an effect
on the overall sound color. I'd like to see actual experimental
results.
Glenn
Toby
strength of evidence if your mind is set against it.
Anyway it's more like a whisper at five feet next to a power mower. Why
don't you read the text that I transcribed in the message to Robert above,
and read the Coltman paper. The link is somewhere near the top of the
thread.
Toby
"Glenn Spiegel" <effective...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:83e27aa7.04082...@posting.google.com...
Toby
flutes in silver, gold and palladium...
Toby
"Glenn Spiegel" <effective...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:83e27aa7.04082...@posting.google.com...
David Beecroft
Did a little more thinking...
Even though the saxophone is open at one end the standing wave is still exerting considerable pressure upon the material of the saxophone. Although the main frequency of the standing wave would not be very much affected by material, the overtones would be. Every material has it's own inherent "sound". Take for example the kids wind-up toy that plays twinkle twinkle little star... I remember that when you placed it upon a wooden chair it became louder, like a guitar body, but you could place it upon other materials and the sound quality (overtones) would change dependent upon the material. I might also argue that with a stringed instrument the overtones are not only altered by the resonating body that they are attached to, but also by the various materials that make up the string or wire (or cat gut) and the harp assembly.
While various materials might not alter the fundamental standing wave they do have a significant impact on the overtones, imparting their own inherent "sound" or willingness to resonate at different frequencies.
Later,
D.
David Beecroft
Toby wrote:
>Robert wrote...
>
>snip<
>
>Nederveen cites a study in which deformation of the sax tube due to the air
>column vibration was measured at 1 um, giving a figure of -40dB for the
>ratio of the tube vibration to the air column vibration.
>
>Toby
>
To whomever...
What measurable difference would we be looking for in the upper partials
of a tone are perceptible?
What percentage are the overtones to the fundamental?
Are the reactions of the tube confined to the fundamental tone?
D.
>
>
Toby
partials. The way to affect the partials is to change the bore geometry.
Here's the relevant bit from Nederveen:
"A subject of repeated discussions is the influence of wall vibrations on
the tone quality. Most musicians claim that the wall material is important;
with a few exceptions, scientists deny this. Let us consider the facts.
First of all, it is quite certain that the walls vibrate. This can be felt
with the fingertips and it has also been measured. But the contribution of
wall vibrations to the harmonic composition of the total of radiated sound
is very small: it has been measured as well as calculated that the sound
power radiated by the walls is about 40 dB (10000 times) below that given
out from the holes. Investigations on the steady-state partial composition
of woodwind instruments made from various materials have revealed that only
in rare cases (e.g. thin-walled tubes of non-circular cross-section) are the
wall materials found to influence the composition of partials. It seems that
other opinions on this matter, as reported by some authors, are based on
questionable or no evidence at all. These investigators apparently did not
take all possible precautions by ruling out any slight differences in
geometry when they compared instruments of different material. This leads us
to some reflections on minor geometrical fluctuations.
A minor geometrical change can have a large influence on the composition of
the partials of a blown tube and hence on the tone quality. This can be
understood when we realize that the excitation mechanism oscillating in
steady state produces a set of partials which constitute a harmonic series
(*exact* integer multiples of the fundamental frequency). If, due to some
small change in the bore, the resonance frequency of a partial changes in an
amount comparable to the width of its resonance curve, we may expect a
considerable change in the amplitude of this partial; a similar effect would
appear had the partial been excited by some external source, first in
resonance and then , after a slight frequency shift in the source, out of
resonance. Slight changes in the bore may thus enhance some partials and
suppress others, leading to changes in the timbre of the instrument."
It is also worth noting that the figure of 40 dB is represents the total
contribution of vibrating walls. The difference in that number between
different materials or finishes would be very much smaller.
Toby
"David Beecroft" <ma...@beecroft.de> wrote in message
news:4131986B...@beecroft.de...
Toby
D:
Even though the saxophone is open at one end the standing wave is still
exerting considerable pressure upon the material of the saxophone. Although
the main frequency of the standing wave would not be very much affected by
material, the overtones would be.
T:
What makes you think this? Read the text I transcribed in my reply to
Robert. Here is the germinal part of that:
"The physical quantity causing wall
vibration is the acoustic pressure in the standing wave of the air column.
This can couple to a vibration mode of the pipe walls only if there is
reasonably close agreement between the resonance frequency of the wall mode
and one of the harmonics of the air-column vibration and if the symmetry of
the wall mode is such that the coupling coefficient does not vanish. It is
quite easy to satisy these conditions for a pipe of rectangular cross
section, for the local 'breathing' mode, in which the pipe corss section
distorts successively from barrel to pincushion shape, can have a low
frequency and very low impedance if the walls are thin.
The case of a pipe of circular cross-section is entirely different, for the
breathing mode involves an actual increase in the local radius of the tube,
rather than a simple shape deformation, and therefore has a very high
resonance frequency."
D:
Every material has it's own inherent "sound". Take for example the kids
wind-up toy that plays twinkle twinkle little star... I remember that when
you placed it upon a wooden chair it became louder, like a guitar body, but
you could place it upon other materials and the sound quality (overtones)
would change dependent upon the material. I might also argue that with a
stringed instrument the overtones are not only altered by the resonating
body that they are attached to, but also by the various materials that make
up the string or wire (or cat gut) and the harp assembly.
While various materials might not alter the fundamental standing wave they
do have a significant impact on the Êovertones, imparting their own inherent
"sound" or willingness to resonate at different frequencies.
T:
See above...
Ciao,
Toby
Robert
Thanks for your quotation. I will have to read the entire thing,
however, before understanding what is being said. From the quotation,
it appears that Fletcher & Rossing are thinking in terms of wooden
materials. They also seem to be more concerned with the wall vibration
affecting the internal air modes rather than radiation directly from the
body. It also appears that they mistake the magnitude of the modes of
body vibration to that of the radiation of that vibration. It was not
learned until perhaps the 1980s that it is the interaction of these
modes as well as their magnitudes that determine the degree of direct
radiation.
I am not arguing that Fletcher & Rossing are wrong in their conclusion,
nor am I arguing that different materials (body, plating, lacquer)
necessarily cause a different sound in a saxophone. What I am arguing
is that the present state of scientific knowledge about these matters is
not sufficient to settle the question from theory alone, but must be
determined by empirical measurement.
BTW, on a different topic. Quoted from F&R: "Rougness effects become
significant only when the roughness itself is significant on the scale
of the bourndary layer thickness, or about 0.1mm." I remember asking J.
L. Smith why saxophones are often thought to sound differently by their
owners after being relacquered. (The usual answer is that the polishing
removes some of the metal, making it thinner and so alters its sound.
This is the same argument that the material has a great effect on the
the produced sound, which F&R deny.) Smith told me that it was the
lacquer that caused the difference: from the factory, the outside is
lacquered and the inside is rough. At relacquering, the body is dipped
into lacquer so the inside is lacquered and smooth. The smoothness
causes the difference, according to Smith. This explanation seems to
agree with the statement of F&R.
Toby
describe and press it to your sax body. I think you will find that there is
very little of the amplification that you will most assuredly get if you
place it on a guitar body.
Toby
Toby
> It's worth remembering the Grafton ! A plastic sax made back in the 50s.
> They had problem with the strength of the plastic which meant a different
> mechanism had to be developed which meant the sax wasn't too good.
> As a sax it sounds - like a saxophone !
Surprise!! ;-)
Toby