aYAMAHA
bAix Marseille Univ, CNRS, Centrale Marseille, LMA, UMR 7031, Marseille
Abstract :
Brass instrument design has long been relying on empirical
know-how, build up over the years by the craftsmen. Some
relationships between the air-column geometry, the
intonation and some attributes of sound color have been
formalized through this process by the makers. However,
many properties of the instrument, related to timbre,
dynamic range, playability, etc. are still very difficult to
correlate to the design. Alongside these issues and
important questions for the craftsmen, the knowledge in the
acoustics of musical instruments has extensively improved in
the last decades, benefiting especially from cutting edge
engineering methods for the analysis of dynamic systems. In
this presentation, we will detail some applications of stability
analysis and continuation (Asymptotic Numerical Method),
to physical models of trumpets. This approach aims to clarify
differences between instruments on the basis of calculated
performance descriptors. On a longer term, our goal is to
include these technologies in the development of new
instruments, by providing some virtual performance
analyzers for the design of brass instruments.