Considerations on the influence of apertures for artificial blowing of trombones

Abstract

We are studying the cooperative performance between a human and a robot as a highly cooperative work. We have been working on a system that estimates the timing of a human player playing a recorder, and performs a cooperative performance on a stringed instrument. Currently, we are constructing a system that automatically plays a trombone in accordance with the trombone player’s timing to start playing. In this report, we attempted to extend the range of the trombone by introducing an aperture control mechanism using aperture blades to a part of the artificial mouth for artificial blowing of the trombone. As a result, we succeeded in producing an overtone shift by controlling the aperture size.