Active control applied to wind instruments

Thibaut Meurisse , Adrien Mamou-Mani , René Caussé (1) , David Sharp

1 STMS - Sciences et Technologies de la Musique et du Son

Musicians have always been interested in the evolution of their instruments. This evolution might be done either to adapt an instrument's quality to musicians' and composers' needs, or to enable it to produce new sounds. In this study, we want to control the sound quality and playability of wind instruments, using modal active control. The modal active control makes it possible to modify the input impedance (frequency, gain and damping) of these instruments. A first experiment is presented here. We control the acoustic resonances of a cylinder, which is considered as a simple “brass instrument”. Using microphones, speakers and a DSP, we modify its input impedance. We then test the effect of the control on the playability via tests with brass players. Our next goal will be to adapt the control to real instruments, a trumpet at first, and to evaluate it in a musical context with a musician.

Mots clés: modal active control; wind instruments; input impedance

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Thibaut Meurisse, Adrien Mamou-Mani, René Caussé, David Sharp. Active control applied to wind instruments. Acoustics 2012, Apr 2012, Nantes, France. ⟨hal-00810888⟩