SPECTRAL ANALYSIS OF CLARINET'S THROAT TONE PLAYED WITH ALTERNATE FINGERINGS

摘要

The top portion of the lowest register of clarinet, called sometimes the "break" or throat register, is known as the most troublesome portion to the average player in keeping proper pitches and producing characteristic timbre. A remedy for this is the use of cross fingering (CF for short) in place of the normal fingering (NF). This paper studies the effect of CFs on the spectral structure of the clarinet tone experimentally for the typical throat note A [4 in the B] clarinet with two amateur players. The result showed that 10 out of 39 CFs provided for the experiment raised the power of the 3rd partial by 10 dB or more as compared with that of NF. These CFs have a common property that they close 3 specific holes in the middle part and 2 specific holes in the lower part together with some other holes.