A team of researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder is trying to answer some instrumental questions: Do wind instruments create aerosols — the tiny droplets of liquid that can carry the novel coronavirus? Where do the aerosols come out of a given instrument? And what can be done to make practice and performance spaces safer, particularly amid a pandemic?
Tehya Stockman uses a camera to record her performance to test for aerosol movement and dispersion.
Led by mechanical engineering professor Shelly Miller, the team seeks to find out how musical ensembles around the world can continue to safely perform music together in 2020 and beyond.
“Engineers help solve problems, and we really want to help solve this problem,” Miller said.
After a report from the CDC linked an outbreak of COVID-19 to a choir rehearsal, Miller’s research confirmed that singing could spread the virus that causes it, through aerosols. Although there is no record of an outbreak being linked to an instrumental ensemble, scientists like Miller suspected such gatherings could also potentially spread the virus. However, no one had studied whether playing a wind instrument generates aerosols, how many, or how they move through an indoor space.
So a group of over 120 performing arts groups commissioned Miller and her team to find out. “They wanted to know whether wind instruments are as dangerous as singing and what we could do to make them safer,” Miller said. “They are literally trying to save music.”
Tehya Stockman, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, has been involved with Miller since the start of this research, running tests and providing a musician’s perspective, as she herself plays the clarinet.
“The hope is that students, teachers, school systems, and parents can use this information to calculate their own risk,” Stockman said.
The work began in earnest in June and will run through December. But the first phase of the study is complete. It found that wind instruments, as well as singing and theater performances, do indeed generate aerosols.
While these results are preliminary, Miller recommends musicians wear a mask even while playing, using one with a small slit for one’s mouth and the instrument’s mouthpiece, while their nose remains covered. She also recommended using a well-fitted cover with multiple layers of tightly-woven material over the bell of the instrument—the flared part at the end where the sound comes out—as well as social distancing while playing, playing in a well-ventilated place and limiting the amount of time spent together indoors.
“It’s not going to be just one thing to make you safe. It’s going to be a layered approach,” said Miller.
Researchers are using two different methods to visualize how and where air moves as it leaves an instrument. Once they know that, Stockman works to measure the quantity of these aerosols with mentoring from Miller; Marina Vance, assistant professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Environmental Engineering Program; and Darin Toohey, a professor in atmospheric and oceanic sciences.
“Doing research on a pandemic during a pandemic is very hard,” Vance said, noting that the researchers have taken care to limit time indoors and with each other.
The team is also collaborating with the University of Maryland researchers to model aerosol releases in indoor spaces using computational fluid dynamics.
Already this fall, band students have begun taking these recommendations to heart as part of the third and final part of the study: applying these practices and measurements to real performance spaces, right here at CU Boulder.
As temporary remote course instruction lifts and students return to rehearsal this week, things in the Imig Music Building looks a little different, as Don McKinney, director of bands, has taken into account Miller’s recommendations. Musicians will be spaced 12 feet apart, no more than 18 people will be in a room at a time, masks with mouth slits are required, and 30-minute rehearsals will be followed by 15-minute breaks.
The first few weeks of the semester were spent adjusting to this new normal. But students are on board with these restrictions around playing because they don’t want to lose momentum and their sense of community, he said.
“I told them to keep an open mind and be really flexible about trying this out. We’ll adapt as we go through the semester,” McKinney said.
Photo credit: Glenn Asakawa, University of Colorado