Spectral behavior of recorder tones during transitions between notes
Nicholas J. Giordano, Katherine L. Saenger · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2024
We have studied note transitions in a soprano recorder as tone holes are opened or closed. Experimental results with an instrument excited by an artificial blowing machine are compared to Navier-Stokes-based simulations for an essentially identical instrument geometry. Several different cases have been studied. (1) Transitions involving the opening or closing of a single tone hole, with the notes separated by two semitones; e.g., transitions between C5 and D5. (2) Transitions involving the opening or closing of several tone holes simultaneously; e.g., transitions between C5 and G5. (3) Transitions involving a single tone hole but for notes separated by a major fifth; transitions between C5 and G5 using a forked fingering. Our work has focused on tone hole openings and closings at speeds typical of a human player but interesting behavior was also observed for longer tone hole switching times for cases (2) and (3), in which the sound field inside and outside the instrument was found to take much longer than the tone hole switching time to reach steady state. Work supported by NSF grant PHY2306035