Differences between cylindrical and conical brass instruments; the nonlinear propagation point of view from experiments and simulations

Abstract

The brightness of the sound generated by brass instruments is due to the essential nonlinearity of the wave propagation in the pipe. The bright instruments such as the trumpet and the trombone are different from brass instruments such as saxhorns or flugelhorns. The bright instruments have a cylindrical pipe segment just downstream of the mouthpiece. The conical bore of the saxhorns implies a faster decay of the wave, which reduces the nonlinear wave steepening. In this talk, theoretical and experimental results of brassiness associated with brass instruments having different bores, from mainly cylindrical ones to mainly conical ones, will be shown. The theoretical results come from simulations of periodic regimes using a theoretical background based on generalized Burger’s equations.