  Many musical instruments, as for example woodwind instruments, flute or
violins, are self-sustained oscillating systems, i.e. musician enacts as a
continuous energy source to drive an oscillation in the passive resonator, the
body of the instrument, by means of a nonlinear coupling. For single reed
instruments like clarinet, there exists a minimal value of mouth pressure
beyond which sound can appear. This paper deals with the analysis of this
oscillation threshold, calculated using a modal decomposition of the resonator,
in order to have a better comprehension of how reed characteristics, such as
its strength and its damping, may influence the attack transient of notes.
