Woodwind Synthesis, Playability and Parameter Modeling

Participants: Champ Darabundit and Gary Scavone

Period: 2022 - ongoing


Summary

Despite the fundamental role musicians play in making music, there is a dearth of research on how a musician's physical actions translate to the acoustics of their instruments. Measuring these actions, called playing parameters, is particularly difficult in woodwind instruments due to the complexity of capturing data within a player’s mouth. Playing parameters are distinct from the physical parameters associated with the instrument's shape and material properties of the reed.

The aim of this project is to analyze how the interaction of playing parameters and physical parameters affects the sound of an instrument. This investigation is carried out using physics-based sound synthesis models which closely replicate the behavior and sound of actual instruments.

Publications

  • Darabundit, C.C. and Scavone, G. (2025) "Discrete port-Hamiltonian system model of a single-reed woodwind instrument." (PDF) Frontiers in Signal Processing, Vol. 5, 1519450.
  • Darabundit, C.C., Chatziioannou, V., and Scavone G. (2025) “Mapping woodwind playability using measurement based physical models.” Proceedings of the 2025 International Symposium on Musical and Room Acoustics, New Orleans, USA, May 24-27, in press.
  • Darabundit, C.C., Chatziioannou, V., and Scavone G. (2025) “Distributed single-reed modeling based on energy quadratization and approximate modal expansion.” (Audio samples) Proccedings of the 28th International Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx25), Ancona, Italy, Sept. 2-5, accepted.