An instrumented saxophone mouthpiece and its use to understand how an experienced musician play

Abstract

International audienceAn instrumented saxophone mouthpiece has been developed to measure, during the player's performance, the evolution of important variables: the mouth pressure, the mouthpiece pressure and the force applied on the reed by the lower lip. Moreover, according to the pressure signals in the mouth and in the mouthpiece, the instantaneous ratio of the vocal tract input impedance and of the saxophone input impedance is estimated at frequencies multiple of the playing frequency (using the concept of Gabor mask). On the selected sound examples, analyses reveal many aspects of the strategies of the player. First of all, the role of the vocal tract in the characteristics of the sound production is sometimes prominent. Secondly, the sound production on the desired note (and register) as well as pitch correction seem to be the result of complementary adjustments of the mouth pressure and of the lip pressure on the reed. This is not in agreement with musicians feeling, since they often claim to let their force on the reed unchanged during the note and from note to note