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The Royal Scottish Society of Arts
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Third Meeting of the 180th Session (2000-2001)

Adventures with an Artificial Mouth:
Recent Research on the Physics of Musical Wind Instruments

Murray Campbell
Professor of Musical Acoustics
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Edinburgh

In the Wolfson Suite, Ground Floor
Edinburgh University Library
George Square, Edinburgh
On Monday 15 January 2001, at 7 pm

The basic science of woodwind and brass musical instruments was developed in the nineteenth century by great physicists including Helmholtz and Rayleigh, but many important aspects of the behaviour of flutes, clarinets and trumpets are still not fully understood. In recent years it has been recognised that the sound generating mechanism in wind instruments is a classic problem in non-linear dynamics and chaos theory.

In this talk Murray Campbell describes studies of wind instruments currently in progress which aim to test the predictions of non-linear dynamics, using both human players and artificial blowing mechanisms. The talk will be illustrated by musical examples performed on a variety of wind instruments.

Location of meeting

Members of the Public are welcome to attend

Graham Rule, Secretary


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