This paper presents experimental results on the acoustical influence of the vocal tract in trombone performance. The experimental approach makes use of measurements at the interface between the player and instrument, allowing a relative comparison between upstream airways and the downstream air column impedances, as well as an estimation of the phase of the impedance of the upstream and downstream systems. Measurements were conducted over the full traditional range of playing, during sustained tones with varying dynamic, as well as in special effects such as pitch bending. Subjects able to play over the full range demonstrated significant upstream influence in the higher register of the instrument. These players were categorized in two groups according to their ability to control the phase of the upstream impedance and their ability to generate powerful downstream acoustic energy. Sustained tones played with varying dynamics showed a general tendency of a decrease in vocal-tract support with increase in loudness. Although pitch bends did not involve significant upstream influence at f 0 , results suggest modification of the lip behavior during bending. Vocal-tract tuning at tone transitions was also investigated and found to potentially contribute to slur articulations.

The system formed by a trumpet player and his/her instrument can be seen as a non-linear dynamical system, and modeled by physical equations. Numerical tools can then be used to study these models and clarify the influence of the model parameters. The acoustic input impedance, for instance, is strongly dependent on the geometry of the air column and is therefore of primary interest for a musical instrument maker. In this study, a method of continuation of periodic solutions based on the combination of the Harmonic Balance Method (HBM) and the Asymptotic Numerical Method (ANM), is applied to a physical model of brass instruments. It allows the study of the evolution of the system where one parameter of the model (static mouth pressure) varies. This method is used to compare different B trumpets on the basis of two descriptors (hysteresis behavior and dynamic range) computed from the continuation outputs. Resultsshow that this methodology enables to differentiate instruments in the space of the calculated descriptors.Calculations for different values of the lip parameters are also performed to confirm that the obtained categorization is independent of variations of lip parameters.

In this paper we focus on the analysis of sound producing gestures in the musical domain. We investigate the behavior of intraoral pressure exerted by a trumpet performer in the production of single and concatenated notes. Investigation is carried out with functional data analysis techniques. Results show that different variation patterns occur for single note production, which depend on dynamic level, suggesting the hypothesis that two different motor control programs are available. Results from analysis on consecutive notes give evidence that the coarticulation between two gesture curves cannot be modelled by linear superposition, and that local coarticulation is affected by contiguous units.

Guitar plucked sounds arise from a rapid input of energy applied to the string coupled to the instrument body at the bridge. For the radiated pressure, this results in quasi-harmonic contributions, reflecting the string modes coupled to the body, as well as some transient and quickly decaying components reflecting the excitation of the body modes of the instrument. In order to evaluate the relevance of this transient body sound, a high resolution analysis-synthesis method is described for the extraction of the body-mode contribution from the radiated pressure measured in the near field of the guitar top plate. This analysis scheme is first tested on synthesized signals. Some body-sound emergence indicators are then proposed and computed over a pool of instruments. The influence of the conditions of excitation on the body-sound emergence is investigated, and the instruments categorized according to these objective descriptors. Results show a larger range of body-sound emergence with variations of the plucking position in hand-made guitars compared to industrial instruments. This suggests that these particular hand-made instruments are more sensitive to variations in the control from the player and hence allow a wider range of timbres with respect to the transient coloration of the body modes.