1pMU4: Reproducing tonguing strategies in single-reed woodwinds using an artificial blowing machine

Montserrat Pàmies-Vilà – pamies-vila@mdw.ac.at
Alex Hofmann – hofmann-alex@ mdw.ac.at
Vasileios Chatziioannou – chatziioannou@mdw.ac.at
University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna
Anton-von-Webern-Platz 1
1030 Vienna, Austria

Popular version of paper 1pMU4: Reproducing tonguing strategies in single-reed woodwinds using an artificial blowing machine
Presented Monday morning, May 13, 2019
177th ASA Meeting, Louisville, KY

Clarinet and saxophone players create sounds by blowing into the instrument through a mouthpiece with an attached reed, and they control the sound production by adjusting the air pressure in their mouth and the force that the lips apply to the reed. The role of the player’s tongue is to achieve different articulation styles, for example legato (or slurred), portato and staccato. The tongue touches the reed in order to stop its vibration and regulates the separation between notes. In legato the notes are played without separation, in portato the tongue shortly touches the reed and in staccato there is a longer silence between notes. A group of 11 clarinet players from the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (Vienna, Austria) tested these tonguing techniques with an equipped clarinet. Figure 1 shows an example of the recorded signals. The analysis revealed that the portato technique is performed similarly among players, whereas staccato requires tonguing and blowing coordination and it is more player-dependent.

Figure 1: Articulation techniques in the clarinet, played by a professional player. Blowing pressure (blue), mouthpiece sound pressure (green) and reed displacement (orange) in legato, portato and staccato articulation. Bottom right: pressure sensors placed on the clarinet mouthpiece and strain gauge on a reed.

The interest of the current study is to mimic these tonguing techniques using an artificial setup, where the vibration of the reed and the motion of the tongue can be observed. The artificial setup consists of a transparent box (artificial mouth), allowing to track the reed motion, the position of the lip and the artificial tongue. This artificial blowing-and-tonguing machine is shown in Figure 2. The build-in tonguing system is controlled with a shaker, in order to assure repeatability. The tonguing system enters the artificial mouth through a circular joint, which allows testing several tongue movements. The parameters obtained from the measurements with players are used to set up the air pressure in the artificial mouth and the behavior of the tonguing system.

Figure 2: The clarinet mouthpiece is placed through an airtight hole into a Plexiglas box. This blowing machine allows monitoring the air pressure in the box, the artificial lip and the motion of the artificial tongue, while recording the mouth and mouthpiece pressure and the reed displacement.

The signals recorded with the artificial setup were compared to the measurements obtained with clarinet players. We provide some sound examples comparing one player (first) with the blowing machine (second). A statistical analysis showed that the machine is capable of reproducing the portato articulation, achieving similar attack and release transients (the sound profile at the beginning and at the end of every note). However, in staccato articulation the blowing machine produces too fast release transients.

Comparison between a real player and the blowing machine.

This artificial blowing and tonguing set-up gives the possibility to record the essential physical variables taking part in the sound production and helps into the better understanding of the processes taking place inside the clarinetist’s mouth during playing.

4aMU1 – Are phantom partials produced in piano strings?

Thomas Moore – tmoore@rollins.edu
Lauren Neldner – lneldner@rollins.edu
Eric Rokni – erokni@rollins.edu

Department of Physics
Rollins College
1000 Holt Ave – 2743
Winter Park, FL 32789

Popular version of paper 4aMU1, “Are phantom partials produced in piano strings?”
Presented Thursday morning, November 8, 2018, 8:55-9:10 AM, Crystal Ballroom (FE)
176th ASA Meeting, Victoria, BC

The unique sound of the piano, or any stringed musical instrument, begins with the vibrating string. The string vibrations produce many different musical pitches simultaneously, most of which are harmonics of the note being played. The final sound depends both on the relative power in each of the harmonics in the string, as well as how efficiently these sounds are transferred to the air. This type of arrangement, where there is a source of the sound (the strings) and a mechanism to transmit the sound to the air (the wooden parts of a piano) is often referred to as a source-filter system. The vibrations from the string are said to be filtered through the bridge and soundboard because these wooden components do not transmit every pitch equally efficiently. The wood can change the balance of the sound created by the string, but it cannot add new sounds.

The work reported in this presentations shows that this idea of how the piano works is flawed. Experiments have shown that the wooden parts of the piano can produce sounds that are not created in the string. That is, the wood can be a source of sound as well as the string, and it is not always simply a filter. The sound originating in the wood occurs at frequencies that are sums and differences of the frequencies found in the vibrations of the string, but they are created in the wood not the string.

These anomalous components in the sound from a piano, commonly referred to as phantom partials, were first reported in 1944,1 and work over the following 70 years resulted in the conclusion that they originate in the stretching of the string as it vibrates.2,3 Therefore, the source of all of the sound from a piano is still considered to be the string. This idea has been incorporated into the most complex computer models of the piano, which may eventually be used to study the effects of changing the piano design without having to build a new piano to determine if the change is desirable.

The commonly accepted idea that phantom partials can originate in the string is not wrong – some of the phantom is created by the string motion. However, the work reported in this presentation shows that only a small part of the power in the phantom partials comes from the string. Much more of the phantom partial is created in the wood. This has implications for those trying to build computer models of the piano, as well as those trying to understand the difference between a good piano and a truly great one.

Before this new information can be included in the latest computer models, the process that creates phantom partials in the wood must be understood. The next step is to develop a theory that can describe the process, and test the theory against further experiments. But the idea that the piano is merely a source-filter system will have to be abandoned if we are to understand this wonderful and ubiquitous musical instrument.

1)  A. F. Knoblaugh, “The clang tone of the piano forte,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 128, 102 (1944).

2)  H. A. Conklin, “Generation of partials due to nonlinear mixing in a stringed instrument,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 105, 536-545 (1999).

3)  N. Etchenique, S. R. Collin, and T. R. Moore, “Coupling of transverse and longitudinal waves in piano strings,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 137, 1766-1771 (2015).

4aMU6 – How Strings Sound Like Metal: The Illusion of the Duck-Herders Musical Cape

Indraswari Kusumaningtyas – i.kusumaningtyas@ugm.ac.id
Gea Parikesit – gofparikesit@ugm.ac.id

Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Gadjah Mada
Jl. Grafika 2, Kampus UGM
Yogyakarta, 55281, INDONESIA

Popular version of paper 4aMU6, “Computational analysis of the Bundengan, an endangered musical instrument from Indonesia”
Presented Thursday morning, May 10, 2018, 10:00-10:15 AM, Lakeshore A
175th ASA Meeting, Minneapolis, MN

Bundengan is an endangered musical instrument from Indonesia. It has a distinctive half-dome structure, which is originally built by duck herders and used as a cape to protect themselves from adverse weather when tending their flocks. To pass their time in the fields, the duck herders play music and sing. The illusive sound of the bundengan is produced by plucking a set of strings equipped with small bamboo clips and a number of long, thin bamboo plates fitted on the resonating dome; see Figure 1. The clipped strings and the long, thin bamboo plates allow the bundengan to imitate the sound of the gongs and kendangs (cow-hide drums) in a gamelan ensemble, respectively. Hence, it is sometimes referred to as the poor-man’s gamelan. Examples of the bundengan sound can be found from: http://www.auralarchipelago.com/auralarchipelago/bundengan.

Kusumaningtyas Parikesit – Figure 1. Construction of the bundengan 300 dpi.jpeg
Figure 1. The construction of the bundengan (left). A set of strings with small bamboo clips and a number of long, thin bamboo plates are fitted on the grid (right).

Amongst the components of the bundengan, arguably the most intriguing are the strings. We use computational simulations to investigate how the clipped strings produce the gong-like sound. By building a finite element model of a bundengan string, we visualize how the string vibration changes when the number, size (hence mass), and position of the bamboo clips are varied.

We first simulate the vibration of a 20 cm string, first with no bamboo clip and then with one bamboo clip placed at 6 cm from one of its end. Compared to the string with no clip (Figure 2a), the addition of the bamboo clip alters the string vibration (Figure 2b), such that two vibrations of different frequencies emerge, each located at different sections of the string divided by the bamboo clip. A relatively high frequency vibration occurs at the longer part of the string, whereas a relatively low frequency vibration occurs at the shorter part of the string. This correlates well with our high-speed recording of the bundengan string vibration; see http://ugm.id/bundengan.

Kusumaningtyas Parikesit - Figure 2. Bundengan string without and with clip 300 dpi.jpeg
Figure 2. Contour plot of the bundengan string vibration when plucked at the centre of the string for (a) no bamboo clip, and (b) one bamboo clip located at 0.06 m.

We also simulate how the position of the bamboo clip affect the frequencies of the string vibration and, hence, the sound produced by the clipped string. Figure 3 demonstrates that, for the string with a bamboo clip, we have two strong peaks at frequencies lower and higher than the frequency of the peak when there is no clip. The magnitudes of these two peaks change as the clip is shifted away from the end of the string, changing the pitch of the sound.

Kusumaningtyas Parikesit - Figure 3. Frequency spectrum 300 dpi.jpegFigure 3. Frequency spectra of the bundengan string vibration when the location of the bamboo clip is shifted from 1 cm to 9 cm from one end of the 20 cm string. The spectrum for the string with no clip is also given (top graph).

In a bundengan string equipped with bamboo clip, the emergence of the two different-frequency vibrations at different sections of the string is the key to the production of the gong-like sound. The vibration spectra allow us to understand the tuning of the bundengan string due to the position of the bamboo clip. This can serve as a guide to design the bundengan, providing possibilities for future developments.

 

List of Figures.
Kusumaningtyas Parikesit – Figure 1. Construction of the bundengan 300 dpi.jpeg 
Kusumaningtyas Parikesit – Figure 2. Bundengan string without and with clip 300 dpi.jpeg
Kusumaningtyas Parikesit – Figure 3. Frequency spectrum 300 dpi.jpeg

3aMU5 – How stones make musical sounds?

(Undercut or side cut of bars for making musical sound?)

Junehee Yoo – yoo@snu.ac.kr
Seoul National University
Kwanak-ro 1, Kwanak-gu
Seoul, 08826
Republic of Korea

Thomas D. Rossing– rossing@somecompany.com
Some Company
123 Industry Drive
Industry Town, OH 54321

Popular version of paper 3aMU5
Presented Tuesday morning, June 27, 2017
173rd ASA Meeting, Boston

When you hit a rectangular bar, it makes sound. But the sound is not necessarily nice to hear because the higher mode frequencies are not tuned in harmony. Empirically, people have gotten to know that changing geometrical shapes is a way of tuning sounds. For example, undercutting the bars, like for xilophone or marimba bars is a familiar method. The middle part of each bar is undercut and as a result the 1st mode frequency is lowered as the 2nd mode frequency becomes 4 times higher than the 1st [1]. This change of mode frequency ratios makes the good sound.


Figure.1 Mode Frequency Ration to Note Frequency (Marimba bars along with 5 Octave)

When we search for the frequency ratios of marimba bars along all 5 octaves, we found the same ratios as Figure 1. The frequency ratios of the 2nd mode frequency to the 1st mode frequency are shown as 4.0 in most bars except higher note bar [1]. This produces the tone quality of marimbas.

Are there any other ways of tuning rectangular bars? Korean stone chimes, called pyeongyeongs (Figure 2), provide another example of tuning sound by change geometrical shape of bars [2]. In Asian countries, stone chimes have been cherished musical instruments from the Stone ages [3].

Stone chimes have taken a number of different forms, but generally they have two legs which meet at a vertex. The longer leg is often called the drum, because it is where the chime is struck, and the shorter leg is called the femur or thigh. A Korean stone chime has 115o angle between the drum part and the femur part, and the concave curved base forms a smooth L-shape (Figure 3). The shape is said to be the “shape of the heaven that curves to cover the earth[4].”

Does the shape only have such a philosophical meaning without any acoustical meaning?

In this study, we examine the effects of geometry on the tuning and the sound quality of stone chimes. By changing the vertex angle from 0 o to 180 o and the shapes of the base line, we estimate modal shapes and modal frequencies by means of finite element methods, and these results are compared to modal shapes and frequencies of existing stones, determined by holographic interferometry and by experimental modal testing [2].

At the end, we can conclude the existing shape of Korean L-shape stone chime with 115o vertex angle and the concave curved base is the optimized one. Also, we measured and analyzed frequencies of historical 261 pyeongyeong stones mainly from the 14th to 19th centuries to confirm the above conclusion.

stones
Figure 2. Pyeongyoung, Korean Stone Chime Set


Figure 3. Shape of a Stone Chime


Figure 4. First mode shapes and frequencies of chimelike models with varying vertex angles


Figure 5. Frequency-dependence on vertex angle α in chime like models: (a) Fundamental frequency and vertex angle, on alternative gyeong models. (b) Ratio frequencies of modes and vertex angle on alternative gyeong models.

References

  1. Yoo, J., Rossing, T. D., and Lakin, B., Vibrational modes of five-octave concert marimbas. Proceedings of SMAC 03: Stockholm Musical Acoustics Conference 2003. 2003: p. 355-357.
  2. Yoo, J. and Rossing, T. D., Geometrical effects on the tuning of Chinese and Korean stone chimes. Journal of Acoustical Society of America, 2006. 120: EL 78-83
  3. Lehr, A., Designing chimes and carillons in history, Acta Acustica/Acustica, 1997. 83: 320-336
  4. (In Korean): Lee, H., Akhakquebeom: Illstrated test on traditional music (The National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts, Seoul, 2000)

3aMU8 – Comparing the Chinese erhu and the European violin using high-speed camera measurements

Florian Pfeifle – Florian.Pfeifle@uni-hamburg.de

Institute of Systematic Musicology
University of Hamburg
Neue Rabenstrasse 13
22765 Hamburg, Germany
Popular version of paper 3aMU8, “Organologic and acoustic similarities of the European violin and the Chinese erhu”
Presented Wednesday morning, November 30, 2016
172nd ASA Meeting, Honolulu

0. Overview and introduction
Have you ever wondered what a violin solo piece like Paganini’s La Campanella would sound like if played on a Chinese erhu, or how an erhu solo performance of Horse Racing, a Mongolian folk song, would sound on a modern violin?

Our work is concerned with the research of acoustic similarities and differences of these two instruments using high-speed camera measurements and piezoelectric pickups to record and quantify the motion and vibrational response of each instrument part individually.
The research question here is, where do acoustic differences between both instruments begin and what are the underlying physical mechanisms responsible?

1. The instruments
The Chinese erhu is the most popular instrument in the bowed string instrument group known as huqin in China. It plays a central role in various kinds of classical music as well as in regional folk music styles.  Figure 1 shows a handcrafted master luthier erhu.  In orchestral and ensemble music its role is comparable to the European violin as it often takes the role as the lead voice instrument.

A handcrafted master luthier erhu. This instrument is used in all of our measurements.

Figure 1. A handcrafted master luthier erhu. This instrument is used in all of our measurements.

In contrast to the violin, the erhu is played in anupright position, resting on the left thigh of the musician. It consists of two strings, as compared to four in the case of the violin. The bow is put between both strings instead of being played from the top as European bowed instruments are usually played. In addition to the difference in bowing technique, the left hand does not stop the strings on a neck but presses the firmly taut strings, thereby changing their freely vibrating length.  A similarity between both instruments is the use of a horse-hair strung bow to excite the strings.  The history of an instrument similar to the erhu is documented from the 11th century onwards, in the case of the violin from the 15th century. The historic development before that time is still not fully known, but there is some consensus between most researchers that bowed lutes have their origin in central Asia, presumably somewhere along the silk road. Early pictorial sources point to a place of origin in an area known as Transoxiana which spanned an area across modern Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Comparing instruments from different cultural spheres and having different backgrounds is a many-faceted problem as there are historical, cultural, structural and musical factors playing an important role in the aesthetic perception of an instrument. Measuring and comparing acoustical features of instruments can be used to objectify this endeavour, at least to a certain degree.  Therefore, the method applied in this paper aims at finding and comparing differences and similarities on an acoustical level, using different data acquisition methods.  The measurement setup is depicted in Figure 2.

Measurement setup for both instrument measurements.

Figure 2. Measurement setup for both instrument measurements.

The vibration of the strings are recorded using a high-speed camera which is able to capture the deflection of bowed strings with a very high frame rate.  An exemplary video of such a measurement is shown in Video 1.

Video 1.  A high-speed recording of a bowed violin string.

The recorded motion of a string can now be tracked with sub-pixel accuracy using a tracking software that traces the trajectory of a defined point on the string. The motion of the bridge is measured by applying a miniature piezoelectric transducer, which converts microscopic motions into measurable electronic signals, to the bridge. We record the radiated instrument sound using a standard measurement microphone which is positioned one meter from the instrument’s main radiating part. This measurement setup results in three different types of data: first only the bowed string without the influence of the body of the instrument; the motion of the bridge and the string; and a recording of the radiated instrument sound under normal playing conditions.

Returning to the initial question, we can now analyze and compare each measurement individually. What is even more exciting, we can combine measurements of the string deflection of one instrument with the response of the other instrument’s body. In this way we can approximate the amount of influence the body has on the sound colour of the instrument and if it is possible to make an erhu performance sound like a violin performance, or vice versa. The following sound files convey an idea of this methodology by combining the string motion of part of an Mongolian folk song played on an erhu with the body of an European violin. Sound-example 1 is a microphone recording of the erhu piece and sound-example 2 is the same recording using only the string measurement combined with an European violin body.  To experience the difference clearly, headphones or reasonably good loudspeakers are recommended.

Audio File 1. A section of an erhusolo piece recorded with a microphone.

Audio File 2. A section of the same erhupiece combining the erhu string measurement with a violin body.

2. Discussion
The results clearly show that the violin body has a noticeable influence on the timbre, or quality, of the piece when compared to the microphone recording of the erhu. But even so, due to the specific tonal quality of the piece itself, it does not sound like a composition from an European tradition. This means that stylistic and expressive idiosyncrasies are easily recognizable and influence the perceived aesthetic of an instrument. The proposed technique could be used to extend the comparison of other instruments, such as plucked lutes like the guitar and pi’pa, or mandolin and ruanxian.

1pMU4 – When To Cue the Music

Ki-Hong Kim — kim.kihong@surugadai.ac.jp
Faculty of Media & Information Resources, Surugadai University
698 Azu, Hanno-shi, Saitama-ken, Japan 357-8555

Mikiko Kubo — kubmik.0914@gmail.com
Hitachi Solutions, Ltd.
4-12-7 Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, Japan 140-0002

Shin-ichiro Iwamiya – iwamiya@design.kyushu-u.ac.jp
Faculty of Design, Kyushu University
4-9-1 Shiobaru, Minami-ku, Fukuoka, Japan 815-8540

Popular version of paper 1pMU4, “Optimal insertion timing of symbolic music to induce laughter in video content.”
Presented Monday afternoon, November 28, 2016
172nd ASA Meeting, Honolulu

A study of optimal insertion timing of symbolic music to induce laughter in videos

In television variety shows or comedy programs various sound effects and music are combined with humorous scenes to induce more pronounced laughter from viewers or listeners [1]. The aim of our study was to clarify the optimum insertion timing of symbolic music to induce laughter in video contents. Symbolic music is music that is associated with a special meaning such as something funny as a sort of “punch line” to emphasize their humorous nature.

kim1 - symbolic music

Fig. 1 Sequence of video and audio tracks in the video editing timeline

We conducted a series of rating experiments to explore the best timing for insertion of such music into humorous video contents. We also examined the affects of audiovisual contents. The experimental stimuli were four short video contents, which were created by mixing the two video (V1 & V2) and four music clips (M1, M2, M3 & M4).

The rating experiments clarified that insertion timing of symbolic music contributed to inducing laughter of video contents. In the case of a purely comical scene (V1), we found the optimal insertion time for high funniness rating was the shortest, at 0-0.5 seconds. In the case of a tragicomic scene, a humorous accident (V2), the optimal insertion time was longer, at 0.5-1 seconds after the scene; i.e., a short pause before the music was effective to increase funniness.

kim2 - symbolic music

Fig. 2 Subjective evaluation value for the funniness in each insertion timing of symbolic music for each video scene.

Furthermore, the subjective evaluation value rating experiments showed that optimal timing was associated with the highest impressiveness of the videos, the highest evaluations, the highest congruence between moving pictures and sounds, and inducement of maximum laughter. We discovered all of the correlation coefficients are
very high, seen in the table summarizing the test.

Table 1 Correlation coefficient between the optimal timing for symbolic music and the affects for audiovisual contents.
 

funniness

impressiveness

congruence

evaluation

best timing

.95**

.90**

.90**

.98**

funniness

–

.94**

.92**

.97**

impressiveness

.94**

–

.92**

.95**

congruence

.92**

.92**

–

.94**

evaluation

.97**

.95**

.94**

–

** p< .01

In television variety shows or comedy programs, when symbolic music is dubbed over the video as a punch line just after the humorous scenes, insertion of a short pause of between half a second and a full second is very effective at emphasizing the humor of scenes, and increasing the impressiveness of viewer-listeners.

1. Kim, K.H., et al., F. Effectiveness of Sound Effects and Music to Induce Laugh in Comical Entertainment Television Show. The 13th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, 2014. CD-ROM.
2. Kim, K.H., et al., Effects of Music and Sound Effects to Increase Laughter in Television Programs. Media & Information Resources, 2014. 21(2): 15-28. (in Japanese with English abstract).

Tags:

  • Music
  • Video
  • Television
  • Audiovisual