Re: Re: Re: Re: about that 3rd partial...


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Posted by Art H on January 21, 2002 at 00:33:33:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: about that 3rd partial... posted by Mark in Ohio on January 20, 2002 at 17:29:14:

One of the projects that I have never gotten around to completing is the construction of a computer model of a tuba, with which one could quickly locate the nodes and antinodes of any given note played on any model of instrument. The work that I did do on the project convinced me that changing just one section of the instrument, such as the leadpipe or one bow, will always alter the pitch of many notes. The only way to correct a single note is to re-shape the entire horn. Even that will affect a small cluster of neighboring notes.
A tuba is more complicated than a guitar string, but the analogy is not completely worthless: If you file away material from near the one-sixth, five-sixths, and midpoints of a guitar string then the antinodes of its third harmonic will be lighter, causing that harmonic to be sharp compared to the others. No other harmonic will be fully affected by all three alterations.
That's why it takes more than a dent to correct an intonation problem, and that's why you can change the bell and valve-section and leadpipe of a tuba and still encounter most of the same intonation quirks of the original instrument.


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