Science of voice production and voice preservation : for use of speakers and singers.

  • Holmes, Gordon
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Science of voice production and voice preservation : for use of speakers and singers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    37/184 (page 19)
    Reed [nstri sients. The product ion of musical sounds by means of vibra- ting reeds claims our alien! ion, as instruments of Ihi- class bear the nearest analogy to the voice. The reed always covers an aperture which, in vibrating under pressure of air, it alternately closes and leaves partially open for the passage of the current, on a principle iden- tical with that of the siren. Keeds produce tones, therefore, by dividing the air into a series of puffs, the rapidity of which determines the pitch. Their notes are powerful and highly composite, having distinctly recognisable overtones as high as the nineteenth or twentieth of the series. Reeds are divided into striking and free reeds.1 The former, whilst vibrating, strike the margin of the open- ing at each excursion, the latter fit the aperture so as exactly to close it without touching the edges. Reeds may further be separated into two classes, according as they are used with tubes, as in reed organ- pipes, the clarionet, etc.; or as they act only in conjune- tion with their aperture, that is, like the tongues of harmoniums, concertinas, etc. Tube reeds, in material, are generally woody or membran<m8. 1 A reed is, of course, a kind of tubular grass, and the reed of an organ-pipe i>, in fact, a small semi-cylinder againsl the open side of which the vibrating tongue is fitted. Hu( the latter is the essential pari of all reed instruments, and therefore the vibrating lamina, ■!i is the actual agent in producing (lie sound,] to bo termed a iced. . ■ -