Effect of Changing the Vocal Tract Shape on the Sound Production of the Recorder: An Experimental and Theoretical Study

TL;DR

This study investigates how changing the vocal tract shape affects sound production in the recorder, combining experiments and modeling to understand the influence on spectral content and stability of oscillations.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental and theoretical analysis of vocal tract shape effects on recorder sound, introducing a simplified model of jet instabilities influenced by vocal tract coupling.

Findings

Vocal tract shape changes alter spectral harmonic distribution.

Coupling phase affects sound stability and harmonic energy.

A simplified jet instability model predicts experimental observations.

Abstract

Changing the vocal tract shape is one of the techniques which can be used by the players of wind instruments to modify the quality of the sound. It has been intensely studied in the case of reed instruments but has received only little attention in the case of air-jet instruments. This paper presents a first study focused on changes in the vocal tract shape in recorder playing techniques. Measurements carried out with recorder players allow to identify techniques involving changes of the mouth shape as well as consequences on the sound. A second experiment performed in laboratory mimics the coupling with the vocal tract on an artificial mouth. The phase of the transfer function between the instrument and the mouth of the player is identified to be the relevant parameter of the coupling. It is shown to have consequences on the spectral content in terms of energy distribution among the even and odd harmonics, as well as on the stability of the first two oscillating regimes. The results gathered from the two experiments allow to develop a simplified model of sound production including the effect of changing the vocal tract shape. It is based on the modification of the jet instabilities due to the pulsating emerging jet. Two kinds of instabilities, symmetric and anti-symmetric, with respect to the stream axis, are controlled by the coupling with the vocal tract and the acoustic oscillation within the pipe, respectively. The symmetry properties of the flow are mapped on the temporal formulation of the source term, predicting a change in the even / odd harmonics energy distribution. The predictions are in qualitative agreement with the experimental observations.