Abstract
To protect against lip trauma with wind instruments, music splints that cover the sharp edges of anterior teeth are often manufactured by dentists. These custom splints are cast with dental auto polymerizing resin on players’ labial tooth surfaces with reference to their lower dental arch. It is well known that the tone quality is changed by installing music splints.
We recorded two types of trumpet sounds such as long tones (B♭) with and without a splint, respectively, by a professional trumpet player in an anechoic room. We examined the differences of these sounds with single-blind recognition tests. After fast Fourier transform, the higher harmonics were observed more in the sound with a music splint than without it. Furthermore, using the digital filtering technique, we confirmed that the subjects can recognize the differences in high frequency sound with their native ears.
