Re: Original tuba designs?


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Posted by Rick Denney on January 02, 2002 at 17:56:31:

In Reply to: Original tuba designs? posted by Jason on January 02, 2002 at 16:48:27:

The answer is that all tubas copy their predecessors to some extent. Even the first tubas copied some features of other instruments from which they were derived. Tuba development has been incremental, with good tubas becoming good tubas as a result of a little design, a lot of tweaking, and even more promotion by great players.

The first instrument called a tuba was designed by Wieprecht and prototyped by Moritz in the 1830's. It was pitched in F, and resembles a really small, narrow F tuba with five valves and front-action pistons. Cerveny made the first rotary-action tuba, and their models from the 1870's are quite similar to modern rotary tubas, except that bell flares are wider now. Sax designed a bass instrument with top-action piston valves in the 1850's, from which all top-action tubas such as those made by Besson have been derived.

Another way to answer your question (or perhaps a different way to understand your question) is to look at a famous tuba and try to understand what went into its design. Did Bill Johnson of the York Band Instrument Company start with an existing design when he crafted the famous Chicago York? Yes. I have copies of York catalog pages that predate this famous tuba that show BBb instruments of similar size. My suspicion is that his understanding of cause and effect was intuitive at best. He knew that the York bell shape produced a characteristic sound, and he knew from experience all sorts of things that were or were not likely to produce a given effect. So, he took the sum of that knowledge, and built a prototype from parts he could craft, and blew some notes on it. He may well have surprised himself at the quality of his attempt.

The tuba went on to greatness as much because of Arnold Jacobs as because its inherent qualities. Even those qualities didn't emerge immediately, and York never produced more than the two prototypes.

I suspect that most of the great instruments emerged from this trial-and-error process, and then were given their reputations by great players. Once their reputations were established, people started trying to figure out why the instruments were so good, and how to reproduce those effects on other instruments. The instruments that failed (or were never properly demonstrated) were (and are) forgotten, and the ones that succeed become the archetypes for the new generation of instruments to follow.

There are many great tuba crafters in the world who each have some understanding of why things are. But mostly they learn from experience, much like Thomas Edison finding a suitable light-bulb filament material through brute-force trial and error rather than through design. The outstanding craftsman that we have building great tubas therefore start with something they know basically works, and make changes to try to add this feature or improve that flaw, and then describe their efforts by comparing them to the archetypes.

Rick "who thinks real design requires a better understanding of first principles" Denney


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