Posted by tom on April 21, 2003 at 14:47:49:
I spent some time looking over your spectral analysis of the tuba sound, some pretty cool stuff. With all the talk about mouthpieces and cup depth, darkening sounds, and every other possible post about changing the horn, I was wondering.........
would it possible to perform an analysis on different mouthpieces? What I'm thinking is something along with lines of "a deeper cup will help the sound emphasize the lower 6 overtones as compared to a shallow cup will emphasize the upper middle overtones in the sound spectrum." I don't think that the dark/bright argument will be solved, but something like this would provide data as to the mouthpiece selection debate. I'm not from a science background what-so-ever, but I think that actual accoustical data cannot be disputed, as long as the control objects remain the same (the player, the room, and the horn). I also have no idea how detailed something like this would be, but you seem to be the one who could pull something like this off.
I tried something similar, using my Mel Culbertson 6/4 my Monette mouthpiece and a Marc N4 mouthpiece. The monette seemed to place the fundamental and first series of overtones at a few dB above the N4. These are 2 extremes of the mouthpiece collection, but there was a difference. Any thoughts on something like this?