Development and design of synthetic reeds for woodwind instruments

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Graph Tech Guitar Labs are currently investigating the potential of a proprietary material to be used as a synthetic reed for single reed woodwind instruments. Preliminary investigations involving trials with professional musicians have shown that there is a potential of this material to be used for this purpose. Natural cane reed suffers from a short working life, the need to be moistened before playing which softens the reed and further impacts the performance over time from mildew and wear, and large variability in quality despite very high precision fabrication. For these reasons there is a strong push in the reed industry for quality synthetic reeds which can be made comparable in sound, structure and geometry, more durable, and without the need to be moistened before playing. The proposed research project will employ state of the art finite element analysis (FEA) to design reed geometry and material assignment which can be tuned for dynamic behavior that matches that of a "very good" reed. In collaboration with Graph Tech Guitar Labs the reed geometry will be fabricated and tested with purpose built testing equipment that will verify the vibration characteristics predicted by the FEA. Taking advantage of Graph Tech's connection with the musical industry, professional musicians will be asked to provide sensory feedback on the quality of the reeds performance. The role of the woodwind reed in producing sound and the factors which affect the quality of that sound production are subtle and not well understood, the current project will provide insight into those issues and provide an economic benefit to Graph Tech in the process. The successful completion of this project will provide Graph Tech Guitar Labs with a competitive product which is in growing demand in the music industry. Currently producers of the best synthetic reeds are based outside of Canada, namely in Japan, France, and the United States. Having high quality synthetic reeds produced in Canada will help to allow Canada to have a stronger presence in the instrument market and the world as a whole.