Free reed

A vibrating tongue of material that passes through an opening without striking its frame. Airflow drives its motion, producing sound whose pitch depends chiefly on the reed’s dimensions and stiffness.

Free-reed instrument: A musical instrument that produces sound with one or more reeds vibrating freely through openings. This is the instrument family built around the reed’s defining motion.
Beating reed: A reed that vibrates by striking or closing against its surrounding frame. Its contact with the frame is the defining contrast with a free reed.
Sheng: A Chinese mouth organ with bamboo pipes and free reeds, used in several configurations. It is an early, influential instrument built around free reeds.
Melodica: A handheld keyboard instrument in which breath drives free reeds. It shows how a free reed can be controlled by both breath and keyboard.
Cantilever: A beam fixed at one end and free to move at the other. Many free reeds behave approximately like small cantilevered tongues.
Reed (organology): A thin vibrating strip used to generate sound in musical instruments. Free reeds are distinguished from reeds that strike a frame.
Single-reed instrument: A wind instrument whose single reed vibrates against a mouthpiece or opening. Clarinet-family reeds beat against a mouthpiece rather than moving freely through a slot.
Khene: A Southeast Asian mouth organ whose pipes sound through free reeds. Its long history shows free-reed traditions beyond Europe.
Concertina: A small bellows-driven free-reed instrument with buttons at both ends. Its compact layout uses free reeds for a fully chromatic musical range.
Natural frequency: The frequency at which a system tends to oscillate when disturbed. A reed’s natural frequency strongly influences its sounding pitch.

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