Regime Change Thresholds in Recorder-Like Instruments: Influence of the Mouth Pressure Dynamics
Soizic Terrien
Rémi Blandin
Christophe Vergez
Benoît Fabre
Abstract
In the recorder, variation in blowing pressure can produce changes between playing regimes and thus jumps from one note to another. In this paper, such transitions are compared for a recorder played by an experienced player, a person with no playing experience, and an artificial mouth.
The experienced player is observed to shift regime change thresholds up to 240% and 292% compared to the artificial mouth and the non musician (respectively), and thus to enlarge the control of nuances and spectrum. The hypothesis that the dynamics (i.e. rate of change) of the blowing
pressure influences regime change thresholds is tested experimentally using an artificial mouth and numerically through time-domain simulations of a physical model of the instrument. Regime change thresholds are compared for both linearly varying blowing pressure profiles with different slopes
and for piecewise linear ramps of the blowing pressure (including a slope change). The results highlight a strong dependence of thresholds on the blowing pressure dynamics. A phenomenological model of the register change that predicts regime change as a function of the rate of change of the
blowing pressure is proposed. It gives good agreement with experimental data and simulations.