Acoustics-Music-Instrument Making Interface Laboratory – LIAMFI

The evolution of musical instruments follows a pattern repeatedly. Starting from a given instrument, instrumentalists try to use it to get new sounds and composers take this into account in their compositions. Then, instrument makers are seeking how to change the instrument for facilitating the play of these new sounds. The amended instrument can then get on a similar development pattern. Evolution is thus incremental, but sometimes can be made by "jump", such as the invention of the Boehm system for instruments with toneholes, called "woodwinds". The Boehm system (wide toneholes, chromatic instrument) won for the flute and Adolphe Sax grabbed it to create the saxophone, but the system has been adopted neither for the oboe nor for the bassoon, and very partially for the clarinet.
Meanwhile, for several decades, many musical acoustics research teams have been working on issues related to instrument making. This work focuses on understanding, modeling their operation and their numerical simulation. In this context many tools and methods of investigation have been developed for research purposes. However, the transposition of this work to manufacturers remains marginal or limited.
That is why we propose to create the Laboratoire Commun AMIMIL (Acoustics-Music-Instrument Making Interface Laboratory) between CNRS-Laboratoire de Mécanique et d’Acoustique and the Society Buffet Crampon. It is part of a desire to establish a sustainable synergy on the theme of acoustic musical wind instruments but also of digital ones. It aims at getting closer these two entities to better enable the Company to contribute to the specification and the transfer of existing tools and skills, developed for some part of previous collaborative projects between the two partners. For the LMA, the AMIMIL will be a springboard enabling it to deploy human and material resources to achieve this goal, in the very energizing context of the new premises it has.
The proposed scientific issues are related to the design of new instruments and the evaluation of their objective sound quality, using experimental tools, but also subjective judgment of musician or listener.
The aim is therefore to develop new wind musical instrument models by accelerating the design-production-evaluation cycle to launch them as soon as possible on the market. This poses the source of many basic research issues less specific and more numerous than those encountered in collaborative projects that have already been undertaken by the two partners.