Beschreibung:
<jats:p>Operating modes of the clarinet are investigated via a simple model consisting of a uniform flat reed coupled to a constant-area tube as a resonator. The analysis shows that, for lightly damped reeds, the operating frequency which is closest to the natural frequency of the reed is excited at the lowest blowing pressure. Further, the reed must be very heavily damped in order for the lowest resonance frequency of the tube to be preferentially excited. Experiments on a model clarinet, using metal reeds with different amounts of damping applied to the reed, confirm the pattern predicted by the analysis. There is close agreement between the measured and predicted values of the frequency ratio, but in many of the experiments the observed blowing pressure ratios were somewhat higher than the predicted values, the deviation being as high as 40% for the more heavily damped reeds.</jats:p>