When tuning a drone reed, is it possible to specify what is the relationship of the pitch emitted from the reed when “sucked on” out of the instrument, to the note produced when inserted in the instrument? i.e. is the idea that the resonant frequency of the reed should be as close as possible to D? So, if a (base in this case) drone is too low even with the pipe is fully shortened, I assume that I can get the reed back into tunable range by changing the resonant frequency - for example by removing a little of the red wax or resin applied to the lip of the reed, this would change (reduce) the tip mass but not the stiffness, and I would get a higher resonant frequency? I could not increase the resonant frequency by scraping, as this would only reduce the stiffness, and hence lower the resonant frequency (?).
I think the short answers to these questions are ‘no’, and ‘no’. There may be some advantage to getting the free vibratory frequency of the tongue to be a D of some sort, but that’s not what you get when you inhale through the drone quill to get the ‘crow’, as even the short length of tubing that comprises the quill does form its own little bore. In other words, I don’t think you can determine what the reed blade’s natural frequency is, and it may not be critical. What matters is the behavior of the system, and the parts of the system are ‘coupled’.
So, if a (base in this case) drone is too low even with the pipe is fully shortened, I assume that I can get the reed back into tunable range by changing the resonant frequency - for example by removing a little of the red wax or resin applied to the lip of the reed, this would change (reduce) the tip mass but not the stiffness, and I would get a higher resonant frequency? I could not increase the resonant frequency by scraping, as this would only reduce the stiffness, and hence lower the resonant frequency (?).
This second part is mostly true I believe; that is, lowering the frequency of the reed/quill part of the system will drag the response of the whole lower. This is one basis for Geoff Wooff’s “overblowing drone reeds”, i.e. he lowers the blade frequency until it ‘locks in’ at some multiple. So you can in fact raise the pitch of a drone by weighting the tongue, if you weight it until it “jumps” to a different multiple of the natural frequency.
You can indeed raise the frequency by scraping too, if you scrape at the tip and not the base of the reed, since that removes mass from the end, where the “lever arm” is greatest.
Bill
Thanks Bill. Will try removing a bit of the resin (?) to raise the natural frequency a bit.
Nice to hear from Skerries - spent many a summer sunday there in my childhood.
The Ray Sloan method is to aim for the reed to sound a note fifteen semitones above the intended drone note when sucked out of the drone. Stage two is for the drone to sound about a semi-tone or whole tone below the intended note when sucked out of the mainstock. Stage three: under bag pressure the drone will sound the right note or thereabouts. These seem to be overblowing reeds as far as I can work out. Anyway all I can say is that I have had more success using this tuning guide than not. Good luck!