The Clarinet Analysis

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The Inner Workings of the Clarinet
The Clarinet is composed of different joints. The mouthpiece of the clarinet is where the tone is created. It can be constructed of multiple different materials such as rubber, plastic, glass, crystal, and even metal. The reed is kept on the mouthpiece by the ligature which can either use screws or by using a simple cord. Cord ligatures are more common on German style instruments. The barrel of the Clarinet is used to finetune the instrument and to be more adaptable to the player and to whatever ensemble the player may find themselves in. A clarinet normally comes with two different barrels, one a little shorter and one a bit longer. The upper joint contains the keys that are to be played with the …show more content…

When the player pushes air through the instrument, the reed starts swinging open and shut against the mouthpiece. The puff of air travels down the pipe until it reaches the open end where any excess pressure drops to zero, which then causes a negative pressure pulse to go back to the mouthpiece and pull the reed a little tighter, because of this, very little air enters the instrument and a negative pressure pulse starts down the instrument towards the open end where pressure abruptly rises to zero, or normal atmospheric pressure, and sends another positive pulse back to the mouthpiece to start the cycle again. Because the air of the pipe has an actual mass, it is able to make the reed vibrate at the natural frequency of the pipe. Woodwind instruments, such as the clarinet, use feedback from the air that is oscillating in the column to control the air being pushed through the instrument. With clarinets, feedback is controlled by the amount of pressure placed on the reed. The reed is typically spaced from the mouthpiece by about 1 mm. When played, the reed is pushed to about .5 mm from the mouthpiece and normally vibrates around this position. When playing softer tones, the reed doesn’t touch the mouthpiece. This makes the instrument play at the difference frequencies of one or more pressure

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