UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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Author: search.filters.author.Groom, Natalie EliseSubject: search.filters.subject.Commerce-Business

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    AN ANALYSIS OF COMMERCIAL SINGLE REED MICROMETERS IN THE U.S. AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW MANUAL SINGLE REED MICROMETER
    (2020) Groom, Natalie Elise; DiLutis, Robert; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Clarinetists are unendingly frustrated by a lack of consistency in mass produced reeds and the time and money spent searching for a performance-worthy reed. Most clarinetists buy commercial reeds from large companies. In a box of ten commercial reeds, it is fortunate to find even two that would be suitable for performance. A good reed is symmetrical from side to side and maintains a certain slope and proportion towards the center of the reed. When a reed is unbalanced, clarinetists can manually adjust the reed to make it symmetrical, which in turn produces a clear and beautiful tone. In order to identify what areas of the reed require adjustment, clarinetists need to measure the reed’s thickness. These measurements are taken with a single reed micrometer, a precision gauge that measures small distances or thicknesses. There are two single reed micrometers available in the United States: PerfectaReed and the Jeanne ReedGauge. However, these tools have numerous design flaws which make it impossible to achieve accurate and consistent results. When users cannot take accurate measurements of their reeds, they are prevented from being able to make necessary adjustments to poorly performing reeds. Clearly, a new tool had to be invented to solve this market problem. I set out to invent an improved tool which would correct the flaws found in commercial single reed micrometers. After developing a series of prototypes, I invented the Manual Reed Mapper—known as Mr. Mapper—to serve this market need. Mr. Mapper was tested by ten individuals, and the data collected from these tests prove that Mr. Mapper has measurement consistency of 97%, making it the most accurate and reliable single reed micrometer available in the United States.