YAMAHA Corp, R&D
Abstract :
There are some studies on the temporal fluctuation of harmonics in
flute sounds. However, it is still unclear whether it is due to the
fluctuation coming from human player or the nature of the sounding
mechanism. In this study, an experiment was conducted to
investigate temporal fluctuations purely due to the sounding
mechanism of the flute. For this purpose, an artificial blowing system
was built in order to yield flute sounds by a constant air flow as well
as by adjusting the angle, offset, length and velocity of the jet. The
temporal fluctuation for a harmonic component was computed by a
standard deviation for a series of instantaneous harmonic amplitudes
obtained from short-time audio analysis. The result shows that the
temporal fluctuation increases as the average harmonic amplitude
decreases, and vice versa. The effect of the temporal fluctuation on
perceptual impression was finally confirmed by a synthesis
experiment where flute sounds were re-synthesized with controlling
the amount of the temporal fluctuation.