An acoustical comparison of the serpent and the ophicleide

The serpent is a lip‐excited wind instrument with an air column length of around 2 m and an approximately conical bore. In the form in which it emerged in France in the sixteenth century, it is a wooden tube with six finger holes and a chromatic compass of three octaves. The serpent suffers from some problems related to the fact that all the holes are covered directly by the fingers. The holes are grouped in two clusters, and the hole diameter is too small to provide adequate venting. The ophicleide, invented in the early nineteenth century, has a similar bore profile to the serpent. Eleven or more side holes in the thin‐walled metal tube are covered by lever‐operated padded keys; these allow most notes to be obtained without cross fingering, and the size and placing of the holes are not limited by the anatomy of the human hand. Several acoustical investigation techniques, including input impedance analysis, pulse reflectometry and excitation by an artificial mouth, have been used to investigate the extent to which the ophicleide is a successful solution to the acoustical problems posed by the serpent.