Anyone know if it's an electronic oscillator with no air being passed through it or does it use a pressurized air stream? It's my understanding that a brass instrument doesn't HAVE to have air blown through it to work, that just happens to be the only way for a human to create the necessary vibrations.
I had the opposite feeling. It looks like he (it) is blowing air through it, and pressing keys on a real horn. With the polymers available these days it would be quite easy to make the proper interface to the horn's mouthpiece (along with the vibrations our lips make when we do it), and the programming to press the keys/buttons on the horn is trivial.
I'm pretty sure he is. I think the "synthness" you're hearing is the fact that you've never heard a trumpet played without the "flaws" inherent with the way humans generate tones on a brass instrument. The articulations, the vibrato.
The University of Edinburgh made a set of artificial lips for experimenting with trombone design. It was two lengths of rubber tube with pressurised water in them. Increasing or decreasing the pressure changed the note. Air was blown through these lips to make the buzz
On a sunny day (Sat, 22 Dec 2007 21:25:36 -0000) it happened "Gordon Hudson" wrote in :
I have played trumpet once upon a time, but my ears did not get blue. I did almost pass out once however, as it took all oxygen from my head....
I waited until the end of the movie to see if it would take the trumpet down, so I could see the 'lips'. Unfortunately not. For the rest it is pretty good:-) And it likely does not spit so much as we do :-) Could add that as a feature though!
The air doesn't make the sound, the trumpet player's lips have to vibrate, similar to a reed instrument - the trumpet tunes the vibrating column of air and couples it, via the horn, to the environment. Lips/breath are excitation, length of pipe is the tuned circuit, horn is the impedance matching element.
Now getting a robot to do it? A trumpet player starts the note by pressurizing the mouth, tensing the lips, then suddenly removing the tongue to start the note - similar to spitting material off the tip of one's tongue.
Without those elements it is bound to sound different even if a robot is producing the sound by blowing air into the instrument. - the cheap easy way would be to add a reed to the mouthpiece and that would make it sound more like an alto sax?
I do know for a fact that there's a church in NYC that has a few dozen trumpet - bugle pipes (one for each note) on the pipe organ and it does sound like a trumpet so there must be an organ maker that knows how to do it. Strictly speaking, it wouldn't be a trumpet any more if it had a reed in it.
Lip tension and pressure will get four notes per valve or combination of valves - 4 solid notes; with good players able to hit several higher notes per valving. A bugle is basically a four note instrument, a valve bugle is an eight note instrument.
There is a big difference between blowing air across an opening, such as that used in a flute, and blowing reverberated air through a horn's mouthpiece.
Both the flute, and woodwind instruments would be far easier to construct and perform upon than those of the horn section.
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