Clarinet Construction: Barrels, Part 5
Today, we had a massive breakthrough! We printed out one of our “finalized” designs for the body of the clarinet barrels (which requires a negligible amount of filing down, thank God), and began play testing it. To my surprise, this barrel sounded better than the actual hard rubber barrel I modeled it after! It actually managed to help me produce a good — if not excellent — sound on a (bad) plastic clarinet!
Experimenting with this barrel really threw me for a loop — I had no idea that it could’ve made the instrument sound better than it does with stock barrel! It didn’t even make sense as to how it could’ve made it sound better either. This 3D printed barrel was inferior in both material and mass, and somehow, it made my plastic clarinet play better. What could’ve caused this to happen?
I have a few hypotheses as to how this had happened. The best one has to do with how the bore (the small, circular extruded cut through the entire barrel) of the 3D printed barrel has a smaller cross-sectional area than that of the model barrel. I think this may be the case, as the equation of continuity
[Av = a constant]
(where A is the cross sectional surface area of a pipe, and v is the velocity of the fluid)
states that as the cross-sectional area of your “hose” decreases, the fluid velocity will rise proportionally to ensure that the constant side of the equation remains the same for any two values of A and v. I’m assuming that the increased velocity of the air (caused by the decreased cross-sectional area of the bore of the 3D-printed barrel) had caused the instrument to project better, which caused me to play with less resistance, which caused me to relax more and create a better sound overall.
An issue with this hypothesis is the fact that it’s based on two assumptions, those being:
- That my terrible set up (a Vandoren B45 Lyre [an extremely open mouthpiece that requires lots of air, which can cause extra tension] and an old, cracked synthetic reed [also an extremely free-blowing piece of equipment that may cause more tension]) requires so much air that I began tensing up for some unknown psychological reason, and that the induction of a more resistant piece of equipment helped remedy that tension.
- The equation of continuity even makes sense in this context.
I may be wrong. In fact, I’m almost 90% sure I’m wrong, considering I’ve never learned anything about fluid dynamics in my life before (aside from the continuity equation). Regardless of the fact that I’ve recently been thrown onto a goose-chase to figure out what’s the next biggest variable in optimizing these parts, I’m still excited to see that they’ve not only outperformed their predecessors, but that they’ve outperformed their model, too!
If you’re curious as to how this barrel sounded, please take a listen to a short clip of me playing on it (with the aforementioned terrible set-up). I’m playing the first couple bars of the Rose 32 Clarinet Etudes, specifically etude 1.
