Monitoring saxophone reed vibrations using a piezoelectric sensor
Alex Hofmann, Vasileios Chatziioannou, Alexander Mayer, Harry Hartmann · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2017
In sound production on single-reed woodwind instruments the reed is oscillating in a frequency related to the length of the resonator. Strain gauge sensors attached to single reeds have been used to capture the vibrations of the reed to investigate articulation techniques on saxophone and clarinet. Reeds can be made from natural cane and also from synthetic materials like oriented polymers or layers of fiber-reinforced polymers. Such synthetic reeds allow to integrate sensors inside the reed during manufacture. However, integrated strain gauge sensors produced signals with high noise, which have been shown not to be ideal for amplification purposes. Replacing the integrated strain gauge with a piezo film sensor greatly enhanced the sound quality of the sensor reeds. With this procedure, electronically augmented woodwind instruments may be constructed for performance, acoustic measurements, and music pedagogy feedback systems.