Posted by K on February 15, 2004 at 20:23:06:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: ?s on low budget tubas posted by Kenneth Sloan on February 15, 2004 at 14:09:22:
If my points of view are hogwash, then I am happy to have cleaned you up for the weekend Kenneth, bristles and all.
Geniuses like Joe S can bend notes into pitch on any instrument, He probably could be in pitch playing chromatically over 7 octaves on a 1 valve contra bugle in G.
Even highly pro players hate doing military/civilian marching services on 3 piston circulars, and they even have the benefits of being capable slide jugglers, which will come to a bearing, if they are equipped with moveable top slides on their 1st valves like on the Conn 20K.
I have had the more or less good fortunes to conduct very different ensembles. If they comprise 3 valve Bb or BBb instruments, all chords with C or F in the bottom sound way off, if there has not been an appropriate slide pulling.
But if that slide pulling is permanent and not applied on an ad hoc (as needed) basis, all the C#'s and F#'s will come out deadly flat and also will skew the ensemble intonation.
All scale notes plus the chromatic in-betweens have to be accessible with good intonation, if the music is not kept within very restricting boundaries.
If we look at the fairly common Bb major then Bb, C, D, Eb, F, G, and A obviously have to be in tune.
But so have
B natural, the third of the parallel variant
Db, the third of the tonic variant
E natural, the leading note to the dominant
F#, the leading note to the parallel
Ab , the fourth of the sub-dominant scale.
None of these sample can be dismissed as being exotic. They are everyday fare in even the simpler tonal music.
Personally I hate roots being sharp, but even more I hate leading notes being flat. That lead me to teach my band members pulling strategies according to the key of the music played.
I have met many amateur players, who had compromise stationary pulls on their 3 valve brasses. They all maintained to lip all notes involving the 3rd valve in tune. That was true nonsens, as they inevitably rattled my ears, when they played these notes.
I have mentioned Joe S as an exceptional player, which we should not count in here. But I would like to take a look on the folks advocating 3 valve bass brasses. Do you play 3 valve low brasses yourself Kenneth? Do your sons? Does your wife play a Jupiter flute with a reduced key system? Does your grand piano stay without re-tunings for years on end?
One authority once reported, that beginning string players tended to sound very good on Stradivarius instruments, whereas accomplished players often were able to compensate for the shortcomings of more humble instruments. But the world sadly wasn't constructed to treat the beginners that way.
Within the brass world we are in the happy situation, that a not so beautiful, but very playable, 4 valve tuba often can be had at the price of a new and shining, but rather limiting 3 valve instrument.
Instead of relegating folks coming back to the tuba to insufficient 3 valve instruments, which we wouldn't play ourselves, then we should help them acquire relevant instruments. And 4 valve BBb tubas are just about as relevant as BBb tubas come.
Klaus