Modeling pulse-like lip vibrations in brass instruments

Abstract

During the starting transient of a note on a brass instrument it can take several cycles of lip vibration before acoustics reflections from the end of the instrument can influence the lip frequency. Under certain conditions the lip may fail to oscillate at the pitch of the air column resulting in an unwanted pulse-like waveform with relatively low repetition rates (similar to the vocal fry register of phonation in the human voice). This is often observed in the playing of beginners if the lips are insufficiently tense or if the top and bottom lips overlap to a large extent. In this study the reasons for this behavior will be investigated using modeling techniques with the aim of improving the agreement between physical models and measured transients by including the forces responsible for this effect.