Determination of acoustic properties of mouthpiece used for bassoon

This study is on the determination of the acoustic properties of the reeds used in the playing of the "bassoon", which is a musical instrument. Acoustics, one of the branches of physics, is the science that measures the propagation speed and frequency of sound. Examining the numerical values and wave structure in the frequency spectrum gives information about whether a sound is "correct sound" or "false sound". For this reason, it is important to examine the factors affecting the frequency spectrum of musical instruments and to optimize these factors. In the bassoon instrument, factors such as reed types, pressure difference applied with the reed, and the amount of air entering the reed were determined as important parameters affecting the frequency spectrum. Frequency spectrum analysis was insufficient in studies on bassoon reed. This thesis was made to contribute to this subject. In this study, Fourier transform was used to determine the acoustic properties of reeds. The sound from the reed and bassoon was collected by microphones and these datas were transferred to the data acquisition system via a computer. Then, these datas were transformed into Fourier transform using appropriate codes in Matlab program. The data received were examined in terms of amplitude and frequency, and factors such as which measurements obtained higher amplitudes, whether the frequency spectrum was fully obtained, whether there was a deviation in the occurring frequency values, and if so, how much it deviated and which parameters were more appropriate were examined. Before the studies, measurements were made to show the independence of the measurements from parameters such as sampling length, sampling frequency, microphone position. The experiments were divided into two parts. In the first part, the comparison of organic and synthetic reeds in the measurements played with the bassoon instrument, the comparison of the Rieger-1a, Rieger-2 and Thunemann reed geometries and the comparison of three different reed hardnesses as soft, medium and hard were made. The studies in this section were examined for 7 different notes and 5 measurements were taken for each measurement parameter. In the second part, the changes in different music dynamics and different pressures were examined through the experimental system established. In addition, in this part, the effect of the speed of the reed outlet on the frequency analysis is examined.