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Bradly Gassner Dr. Barry Bookout General Physics I 26 March 2012 The Effects of the Addition of a Mouthpiece and Bell Flare on a French Horns Harmonic Series Sound waves are all around us. Any type of oscillatory motion can produce these disturbances which are transmitted to the ear, allowing us to perceive the world. These waves may be introduced into a closed container of air where they vibrate in predictable motions. In particular, a column of air that is set into vibration is particularly interesting from both a mathematical and musical standpoint. In the analysis of different types of vibrating air columns, many digressions are made to significantly enhance the tractability of mathematical analysis. Usually, the air column is modeled as a tube of constant cross-sectional area on the length of the tube. While these models are useful, the actual construction of such a device produces a system that gives rise to characteristics which are not musically useful within the western tradition of our equal tempered musical scale. Brass wind instruments are members of this family of resonating air columns. Through trial and error, brass instrument craftsmen have learned to modify the geometry of the horns to produce musically desirable attributes by the addition of a mouthpiece and a bell flare. The addition of a mouthpiece and bell flare significantly affects the characteristics of a resonating air column, such that the deviations from an ideal tube give rise to more musically desirable attributes. The beautiful sound and desired playing characteristics of a French horn arise from these variations in geometry.

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In the simplest mathematical model of a vibrating system, a pendulum, there is only one natural frequency which can be excited. The 'column of air' system in which we are interested, however, has a characteristic that makes it possible to excite a standing wave in the system due to the addition of boundary conditions that are placed on the vibrating structure. These conditions restrict the motion of the system to many but discrete modes of oscillation. We say that the allowable frequencies of oscillation have been quantized (Serway 519). Whenever our column of air is excited at a frequency equal to one of these allowable quantized frequencies, the oscillating system will reinforce the amplitude of the applied wave, leading to a phenomenon called resonance. This is the basis for our discussion in regard to the propagation of waves in brass instruments. The frequency of standing waves that can be present in a tube which is open at both ends is given by

Equation 1

Above,

is the speed of sound in air,

is the length of the column of air, and

represents the

serial number of the harmonic above the fundamental frequency (Serway 525). The presence of displacement antinodes at the ends of the pipe is due to the pipe being open to the atmosphere. The pressure variation here from peak to trough is small. This open end will still reflect much of the wave back into the pipe at the junction of the pipe and the room. See Figure 1, below. The pulse is inverted; a high-pressure wave exiting the pipe is reflected as a rarefaction (Benade 397). Mr. Benade goes on to say,

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"If the round-trip time that the wave takes to go from the mouthpiece or excitation end to the open end is suitable, the waves traveling in the duct reinforce one another, and in due course a large pressure disturbance is set up in the pipe" (397). These 'large pressure disturbances' are indeed the standing waves in which we are interested. A few different frequencies of the quantized vibrations allowed can be seen represented in Figure 1. Due to the particular arrangement of the boundary conditions, all integer harmonics are possible, not just the first five as shown in the figure. Although this model of a tube open at both ends is indeed useful, the system of a french horn which we are discussing is more closely approximated by a long,
Figure 1: Modes of Vibration for an Open-Ended Pipe (Nave)

straight tube open at one end and closed at the other. The closure of one end is provided by the mouthpiece. While the mouthpiece does not provide complete closure, a very close approximation may be made to further our discussion. A displacement node arises here at the closed end of the tube because the wall will not allow longitudinal motion of the air (Serway 524). This arrangement gives rise to

Figure 2: Modes of Vibration for a Pipe Closed at One End (Nave)

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slightly different quantized frequencies, namely, the odd integer harmonics. The frequency of standing waves that can be present in a tube which is open at both ends is given by

Equation 2

Similar to Equation 1, and

is the speed of sound in air,

is the length of the column of air,

represents the serial number of the harmonic above the fundamental frequency (Serway

525). Applying our second equation to a constant-width tube that is open at one end and is the same length of the French horn, we see the resulting harmonic series in Table 1. The frequencies listed in Table 1 directly correlate to the pitches charted in Figure 3. It has been shown that a closed tube only produces the odd harmonics above the fundamental frequency. However, for a musical instrument, it is desirable to have a large

Table 1: Quantized Frequencies in open-ended pipe of same length as a French horn

Figure 3: Harmonic Series in open-ended pipe of same length as a French horn

complement of harmonics from which to choose: a full harmonic series. See Figure 4 for the full harmonic series for the French horn.

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The musical applications of the constant-width 'ideal' tube presented above are limited within our western tuning system. First of all, the open end of the tube is far too narrow to efficiently
Figure 4: French horn harmonic series, concert pitch

project pressure waves out of the instrument. Second, since the tube only

produces the odd-numbered harmonics, the resulting musical pitches are not 'placed' correctly on the musical staff. These issues can be corrected by modifying the geometry of the resonating column. The harmonic series consisting of only odd resonances may be made to behave more like our desired full harmonic series by the addition of a mouthpiece, which forces higher resonances downward, and a bell, which forces lower resonances upward. The net effect is a 'squishing' of the useful resonant frequencies into a sequence that is close to a true harmonic series.
Figure 5: The resulting desired harmonic series

In addition to providing a comfortable place for the player to rest his or her lips, the mouthpiece drives the higher resonances downward from the resonances of the closed pipe discussed above. The mouthpiece here acts as an additional resonating cavity. As the played frequency approaches a resonant frequency of the air column which it is driving, the effective length of the tube becomes greater (Nave). Due to the inverse relationship between tube length

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and fundamental frequency, referring to Equation 2, longer tubes support lower resonant frequencies. The net result here is a longer tube length for only the higher frequencies, thus driving down the resonant frequencies of these highest harmonics. The bell which we attach to the end of our resonating tube produces a couple of effects. First, the bell is very efficient at radiating sound from the tube to the open air. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the bell has the effect on the air column so as to raise the lower resonances from those of our closed pipe up toward the resonances of a more useful harmonic sequence. The lowest resonances are shifted up the most (Nave). As a side note, the large effects of these two seemingly simple variables on the playing characteristics of the horn as a whole explain the fascination with research into and modification of bells and mouthpieces. There are businesses which solely produce bells, and businesses which solely produce mouthpieces. The harmonics of this modified tube now are very useful to the musician, corresponding to pitches and intervals that are used often in our western tradition of music. A closed-ended, constant-width column of air does not exhibit musical properties that are especially desirable. Since this system only resonates with standing waves at the odd-numbered harmonics, the resulting harmonic series is too spread out to be useful. However, we can modify the characteristics of this resonating air column by modifying its geometry. The addition of a mouthpiece helps to drive the higher harmonics down, while the addition of a large bell drives the low harmonics up. This combination yields a full, playable harmonic series. Through trial and error, many generations of brass instrument craftsmen have culled the secrets of acoustics and air column resonance from Mother Nature while not understanding the physics behind their

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behavior. Only with the development of sensitive measurement instruments and acoustic environments within the last few decades have we been able to determine the underlying causes.

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Works Cited Benade, Arthur. Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Print. Nave, Carl R. HyperPhysics. Georgia State University. Web. 24 March 2012. Serway, Raymond A., et al. Physics for Scientists and Engineers, 8th Edition. Belmont, California: Brooks/Cole. 2009. Print.

Figure 1 obtained from HyperPhysics <http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/ hbase/waves/opecol.html#c3> Accessed 24 March 2012. Figure 2 obtained from HyperPhysics <http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/ hbase/waves/clocol.html#c1> Accessed 24 March 2012.