Time‐domain and frequency‐domain explorations of nonlinearity in musical wind instruments.

Abstract

Nonlinearity is an essential feature of the operation of sustained‐tone musical instruments, as well as being an important feature in many impulsively excited instruments. Analysis of the behavior of wind instruments can be approached either through the time domain, in which case the linear resonant parts of the instrument are characterized by their impulse response, or in the frequency domain, in which case the characterization is in terms of mode shapes and frequencies. The generator mechanism in some cases has an embedded linear mode structure as well, but there is an essentially nonlinear coupling between it and the main instrument resonator. This paper examines the different types of information, or the complementary views of the same information, that can be obtained by time‐domain and frequency‐domain approaches to wind instrument acoustics.