What makes the sound?

[bloke]

Piano and guitar strings are supported at both ends (by bone/plastic or felt) yet they don't bang against anything (once set into motion) in order to continue to sound. Violinists can initiate sounds on their strings (supported by wood at both ends) by plucking as well, but - mostly - very gently draw a bow (something to stimulate vibration, as a substitute for air against a reed or an embouchure) so that the vibration is sustained - rather than dying away. btw...The embouchure is also quite well-attached to the human body (which is pretty gooshy, and not particularly resonant), yet (just as with strings and reeds) the embouchure lips do not beat against each other nor against anything resembling a fingerboard or a mouthpiece tip.

As - seemingly - it has finally occurred to you that a steel jaw harp reed is an undeniable example of a reed that NEVER beats against anything - with you resorting to "It's hooked to a frame" - reminds me of this satire:





Lips (more flexible than reeds or even strings) can come very close (particularly when vibrating at higher frequencies, as - being part of the human anatomy - it's possible for a human to widen or narrow the space between them), but that's all that happens. "Motorboating" lips (ie. "making a fart sound" into the mouthpiece by forcing the lips to hit against each other) will only result in the "fighting itself" noise heard in my first example. The fact that the lips' spacing can be changed by the player is the reason why brass instruments can often access a wider frequency range than can woodwinds (even though woodwinds manage to access - typically - three or four overtones, and can shorten and lengthen their instruments to a greater percentage than can happen with brass instruments. Oboe reed blades are set remarkably close to each other as well (nearly microscopically close), but also do not whack against each other when air stimulates them to vibrate in unison.

Were I to allow my lips to touch each other when playing (re: demonstration), that would certainly define the end of anyone paying me to do it.
again: If this is how you or anyone else chooses to approach/strategize their playing, that's your/their business. Earlier, you stated that it doesn't make any difference what people believe. I say that it really doesn't make any difference whether people are or are not successful in regards to freely vibrating their lips - to stimulate the vibration of an air column within a brass instrument. ie. "Who cares? YET what is, is."

[peterbas]

And for the jaw harp, if the frame isn't touching a solid object it will not produce any sound.
So the frame against the teeth, the lips on the frame and the tongue to the frame. A lot of touching going around.
For string instruments, a true freely string would be not touching the instrument on both ends. Try getting sound now.

Yes, this is a good point, that these instruments are going to be rather useless analogies because the tone generation is so different - soundboards etc. To be clear, it just doesn't have much of anything to do with wind instruments. Touching / not touching, is not a real issue here, with the fundamental mechanics of wind instrument tone generation.

Touching is elementary, my dear Watson.
Touching means the lips act as a closed pipe. A lot of energy would be lost when the returning wave doesn't hit a closed end making playing a lot more difficult.

[peterbas]

Piano and guitar strings are supported at both ends (by bone/plastic or felt) yet they don't bang against anything (once set into motion) in order to continue to sound. Violinists can initiate sounds on their strings (supported by wood at both ends) by plucking, but - mostly - draw a bow (something to stimulate vibration, as a substitute for air against a reed or an embouchure) so that the vibration is sustained - rather than dying away. btw...The embouchure is also well-attached to the human body, yet it doesn't beat against itself.

Pointing out that the jaw harp is hooked onto the frame (as - likely - it has finally occurred to you that it's an example of a reed that NEVER beats against anything) reminds me a great deal of this satire:

You missed a sentence.
And for the jaw harp, if the frame isn't touching a solid object it will not produce any sound.

Strings do bang against the wood on both ends, you can easily feel the vibration in the wood.

[bloke]

At the risk of (and the responses are so nonsensical that I have begun to suspect it) being trolled myself, I'm out. There's no possible way to make this more clear, and - the clearer I make it - the more nonsense, as well as attempts at changing the subject (such as "the string's vibration causes the thin hollow box to vibrate" - well duh) - are offered in response.

[donn]

Strings do bang against the wood on both ends, you can easily feel the vibration in the wood.

Well, not really, there isn't anything "banging" except in someone's head.

I can only guess what really happens in the air column in wind instruments, but I doubt "closed pipe" is really what we're looking for. To me that brings up a different air column resonance that favors odd partials (the clarinet), and it doesn't make sense that the brass instrument would go there. To me it seems more likely that it's just a side effect, when the pressure balance during the vibration cycle period goes under some threshold. If it didn't happen - if you had a very strong reed, or for that matter if you were playing clarinet - you'd still get sound, but without the kind of square wave effect from the threshold cutoff. The sound doesn't depend on striking. That's just my idea.

Guitar, jaw harp etc. have different tone production mechanics and simply are not going to shed any light on this, at all. It's true that they don't produce tone by striking; nor does the tuba or the saxophone, though, so this doesn't even amount to a straw man argument.

[peterbas]

At the risk of (and the responses are so nonsensical that I have begun to suspect it) being trolled myself, I'm out. There's no possible way to make this more clear, and - the clearer I make it - the more nonsense, as well as attempts at changing the subject (such as "the string's vibration causes the thin hollow box to vibrate" - well duh) - are offered in response.

You brought the jaw harp and strings.
I showed you some real scientific research but you want response to that, which is a real shame that being just the point of the Scientific Method.

[peterbas]

Strings do bang against the wood on both ends, you can easily feel the vibration in the wood.

Well, not really, there isn't anything "banging" except in someone's head.

I can only guess what really happens in the air column in wind instruments, but I doubt "closed pipe" is really what we're looking for. To me that brings up a different air column resonance that favors odd partials (the clarinet), and it doesn't make sense that the brass instrument would go there. To me it seems more likely that it's just a side effect, when the pressure balance during the vibration cycle period goes under some threshold. If it didn't happen - if you had a very strong reed, or for that matter if you were playing clarinet - you'd still get sound, but without the kind of square wave effect from the threshold cutoff. The sound doesn't depend on striking. That's just my idea.

Guitar, jaw harp etc. have different tone production mechanics and simply are not going to shed any light on this, at all. It's true that they don't produce tone by striking; nor does the tuba or the saxophone, though, so this doesn't even amount to a straw man argument.

You should read up a little like here https://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/brassa ... .html#pipe

[bloke]

You're trolling.

I don't need a presumed "scientist" to inform me as to what I'm causing to occur (no hidden internal organs/tissues, but) right on the outside of my own body, and nor what other - when attempted - fails.

[peterbas]

You're trolling.

I don't need a presumed "scientist" to inform me as to what I'm causing to occur (no hidden internal organs/tissues, but) right on the outside of my own body, and nor what other - when attempted - fails.

Nope trolling and use it to make fun of people is your game and you seem to be very proud of it too, check your own timeline.

I am not a scientist but an engineer but I know a scientist or two.

And then there is always Schrödinger's cat.

[bloke]

My brother (retired from ASACE) knows all of those jokes.

They design all of that stuff that makes the out-in-the-world people (who are assigned to jobs of building/servicing their designs) sigh, and put so many automobiles on The Car Wizard's "don't EVER buy one of these" list.




(I tend to suspect that which confuses many is that their lips won't easily vibrate when - simply - blowing out into open space, so they mash their lips together to make some sort of vibrating frequency noise (lips-hitting-lips). When the resistance (of a sealed venturi - ie. with all of the air directed through the venturi) is placed in front of their lips, suddenly the air flow will easily allow the lips to - individually, at the same frequency - vibrate. I can manage to get mine to individually vibrate - albeit not very well - at higher frequencies - with no air seal and no venturi, and others can likely manage this better than I can, but - WITH the air seal and venturi - it happens on its own - given any proper balance of air pressure and spacing between the lips...or - paraphrased - "size of the hole made by the mouth" as Mary Ann refers to it. Again, when playing pitches such as those four ledger lines below the bass clef at a strong fortissimo - with my lips somewhere between 1/4th of an inch to 5/16ths of an inch apart - there's just no opportunity for them to make contact with each other...YET the pitch sounds, and quite loudly/clearly.)

bloke "who continues to allow himself to be trolled, as I suspect these people know better"

[bloke]

It's just not as hard as some people think it is
Check out the very last guy who understands physics:

https://www.facebook.com/maxwristmoto/v ... 7S9Ucbxw6v

[donn]

You should read up a little like here https://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/brassa ... .html#pipe

Thanks - a lot of interesting material there. Apologies for clipping this part, but I think it stands on its own without too much dependence on the rest of the material:

This simple picture already allows us to explain something about how the timbre changes when we go from playing softly to loudly. If we play softly, and especially if we play a high note softly, the lips don't move fast enough and don't have enough time to close completely. In this case we observe approximately sinusoidal vibrations: the system is behaving almost like the linear mass-and-spring oscillator of physics texts. This means that the fundamental in the sound spectrum is strong, but that the higher harmonics are weak. This gives rise to a mellow timbre. Playing loudly, the lips do close, and may close abruptly. This gives what physicists call clipping and strongly nonlinear behaviour, which produce more high harmonics. As well as making the timbre brighter, adding more harmonics makes the sound louder as well, because the higher harmonics fall in the frequency range where our hearing is most sensitive (See hearing curves for details).

I'll have to look harder at the closed pipe story, just guessing right now that they're saying a saxophone is "closed" but has its even partials because of the conical shape, and among wind instruments only the flute is "open." Oh well. My take is that the lips do not need to be completely closed for this effect - same reflection effect during the whole cycle because the embouchure is small enough.

[peterbas]

(I tend to suspect that which confuses many is that their lips won't easily vibrate when - simply - blowing out into open space, so they mash their lips together to make some sort of vibrating frequency noise (lips-hitting-lips). When the resistance (of a sealed venturi - ie. with all of the air directed through the venturi) is placed in front of their lips, suddenly the air flow will easily allow the lips to - individually, at the same frequency - vibrate. I can manage to get mine to individually vibrate - albeit not very well - at higher frequencies - with no air seal and no venturi, and others can likely manage this better than I can, but - WITH the air seal and venturi - it happens on its own - given any proper balance of air pressure and spacing between the lips...or - paraphrased - "size of the hole made by the mouth" as Mary Ann refers to it. Again, when playing pitches such as those four ledger lines below the bass clef at a strong fortissimo - with my lips somewhere between 1/4th of an inch to 5/16ths of an inch apart - there's just no opportunity for them to make contact with each other...YET the pitch sounds, and quite loudly/clearly.)

bloke "who continues to allow himself to be trolled, as I suspect these people know better"

You are mixing two totally different things that readily known and accepted.
Free buzzing is making a buzz with the lip muscles. Air for open and muscles for closing.
Playing is keep a hole open with relaxed lips. Changing air pressure from the standing wave in the mouthpiece opens and closes the lips.
The air blown in the mouthpiece provides the energy to start and maintain the standing wave.

And yes with low loud notes it is possible the lips don't totally close but how long can the be sustained.

[peterbas]

It's just not as hard as some people think it is
Check out the very last guy who understands physics:

https://www.facebook.com/maxwristmoto/v ... 7S9Ucbxw6v

Can you post something more irrelevant than this.
Trolling again I guess.

[peterbas]

I'll have to look harder at the closed pipe story, just guessing right now that they're saying a saxophone is "closed" but has its even partials because of the conical shape, and among wind instruments only the flute is "open." Oh well. My take is that the lips do not need to be completely closed for this effect - same reflection effect during the whole cycle because the embouchure is small enough.

But the measurements and videos clearly show that the lips close completely so your take seems rather irrelevant, don't you think.

[donn]

But the measurements and videos clearly show that the lips close completely so your take seems rather irrelevant, don't you think.

If you return to the same post you quoted, you'll see a discussion from the same source, about different playing regimes where the lips may or may not touch. Soft high notes vs. loud low notes, etc. "Playing loudly, the lips do close ..." -- but in either case the basic acoustic principle is the same.

So I'm sticking to my story: it's interesting, but it isn't a really fundamental point.

• We have photos, we know that the lips close for the cases where we have the photos,
• but whether they do or not in your mouthpiece when you're playing your music, we don't really know for sure, and we have no reason to believe in principle that they must, or they must not.

At most, it's about timbre. (I mean, it might depend on how loud you're playing, for example, but it's a side effect of that, and the timbre is the consequence.)

[bloke]

Who's trolling whom?

I don't know how many people stick out their jaw when they play. I don't. The opening between my lips is considerably more horizontal than it is vertical. If they drilled a hole in a mouthpiece and stuck a camera in there, I would wonder how the mouthpiece was clocked. Of course, the video is also super duper high resolution.

Sometimes, when I have little bits dried skin on my lips - from not having played in a few days and/or having worked outside in the winter, my high range pitches (whereby the lips become much closer together, much more like an oboe reed or a trumpet embouchure) sound a little bit fuzzy (much as when moisture finds Its way between the two blades of oboe or bassoon reeds, and players immediately stop to clean that out) because those little bits of skin (or moisture bridging the individually-vibrating blades of those double reeds) are barely brushing against each other and disturbing the vibration. When I clean that dead skin off my lips, the disturbance in the vibration stops, because - once again - nothing is touching.

Sometimes when we fatigue ourselves - either from too many playing jobs or too much practicing or both, we end up with what we all refer to as a "double buzz". This occurs because one lip is vibrating half as fast as the other one. Again, it's due to fatigue or sometimes with younger players it's simply due to the lack of embouchure development. Were it that the lips were whacking against each other to make the sound, there could be no such thing as a double buzz, because it would be impossible for lips to hit each other at one speed yet also be hitting each other at another speed half as fast. Only with two lips individually vibrating at different speeds can this occur.
---------------
Is this similar to communist/libertarian sort of thing - much like those arguments between strangers on Facebook - where each believe they can convince the other that what they believe is right?

In a mouthpiece, I can't whack my lips against each other and make a viable sound. When I've heard first-day beginners try to do produce a sound with a brass instrument in the same way that they would otherwise make a "raspberries/fart" sound (with no mouthpiece or instrument), it sounds just like when I (video produced) try to quack my lips against each other inside a mouthpiece and play a brass instrument. It's nothing that anyone wants to hear, and it prevents the vibration of the lips. You ignore my video which actually supplies sound (which is the titled topic: producing sound) but you expect me to pay attention to another. You throw up charts and graphs and statistics in many threads, but never record yourself playing in order to demonstrate to us us how they are relevant.

[peterbas]

But the measurements and videos clearly show that the lips close completely so your take seems rather irrelevant, don't you think.

If you return to the same post you quoted, you'll see a discussion from the same source, about different playing regimes where the lips may or may not touch. Soft high notes vs. loud low notes, etc. "Playing loudly, the lips do close ..." -- but in either case the basic acoustic principle is the same.

So I'm sticking to my story: it's interesting, but it isn't a really fundamental point.

• We have photos, we know that the lips close for the cases where we have the photos,
• but whether they do or not in your mouthpiece when you're playing your music, we don't really know for sure, and we have no reason to believe in principle that they must, or they must not.

At most, it's about timbre. (I mean, it might depend on how loud you're playing, for example, but it's a side effect of that, and the timbre is the consequence.)

Photos/videos are from people actually playing.

[peterbas]

Who's trolling whom?

I don't know how many people stick out their jaw when they play. I don't. The opening between my lips is considerably more horizontal than it is vertical. If they drilled a hole in a mouthpiece and stuck a camera in there, I would wonder how the mouthpiece was clocked. Of course, the video is also super duper high resolution.

Sometimes, when I have little bits dried skin on my lips - from not having played in a few days and/or having worked outside in the winter, my high range pitches (whereby the lips become much closer together, much more like an oboe reed or a trumpet embouchure) sound a little bit fuzzy (much as when moisture finds Its way between the two blades of oboe or bassoon reeds, and players immediately stop to clean that out) because those little bits of skin (or moisture bridging the individually-vibrating blades of those double reeds) are barely brushing against each other and disturbing the vibration. When I clean that dead skin off my lips, the disturbance in the vibration stops, because - once again - nothing is touching.

Sometimes when we fatigue ourselves - either from too many playing jobs or too much practicing or both, we end up with what we all refer to as a "double buzz". This occurs because one lip is vibrating half as fast as the other one. Again, it's due to fatigue or sometimes with younger players it's simply due to the lack of embouchure development. Were it that the lips were whacking against each other to make the sound, there could be no such thing as a double buzz, because it would be impossible for lips to hit each other at one speed yet also be hitting each other at another speed half as fast. Only with two lips individually vibrating at different speeds can this occur.
---------------
Is this similar to communist/libertarian sort of thing - much like those arguments between strangers on Facebook - where each believe they can convince the other that what they believe is right?

In a mouthpiece, I can't whack my lips against each other and make a viable sound. When I've heard first-day beginners try to do produce a sound with a brass instrument in the same way that they would otherwise make a "raspberries/fart" sound (with no mouthpiece or instrument), it sounds just like when I (video produced) try to quack my lips against each other inside a mouthpiece and play a brass instrument. It's nothing that anyone wants to hear, and it prevents the vibration of the lips. You ignore my video which actually supplies sound (which is the titled topic: producing sound) but you expect me to pay attention to another. You throw up charts and graphs and statistics in many threads, but never record yourself playing in order to demonstrate to us us how they are relevant.

All anecdotical facts of fiction.

If you bothered to study the graphs you could see that we don't whack our lips together.
The lips make a sweeping motion. If the lips are looked at as a mass-spring system you could see that when the standing wave creates a negative pressure the lips moves outward in a swing door like motion.
Then the wave creates a positive pressure moving the lips back inwards in collaboration with the springiness of the lips wanting the lips to go back to their original position pushes them until they touch. You can see that the volume of lips in the mouthpiece variates in sync with the movement of the lips.

In what way does that recording of you playing in an incorrect way going to learn us then only "don't do it that way".
It the same sentiment what would a recording of myself help if there already millions of recordings of brass players a million times better then me. I surely haven't the foggiest idea.

[Mary Ann]

This us getting quite funny. I'm with Peterbas -- engineers, due to education and the fact that their mode of thinking drew them to that education, think in a certain way. I just wish I could find a physician who is capable of thinking that way.