Posted by Joseph Felton on July 12, 2000 at 02:50:31:
In Reply to: F Tuba: American or German? posted by Kurt on July 12, 2000 at 00:30:39:
WOW! Now here's a can of worms. I can't say I actually have a big clue as to how to answer this one seeing as I'm only one person but perhaps I can give a few thoughts that will spark more intelligent conversation.
Personally, I think the only legitimate reason for using multiple horns is to create a different sound. Arguments about range, finger patterns, or whether the valves go around or up and down have nothing to do with anything. The only person I've ever heard directly state that they want to sound the same on all their instruments is Jay Bertolet. I remember shortly after I started hanging around this board getting into a disagreement over this issue. I still don't have a very clear understanding of what he was getting at but the fact that he owns four very different horns implies to me that there has to be some timbre differences somewhere in there. Care to clear this one up for me Jay? Are you referring more to your approach?
I think a lot of the confusion lays in economics and how peoples tastes have changed over time. Most of us that are pursuing a professional playing carreer have come to terms with the fact that we need more than one horn to cover the literature correctly. Due to the typical monetary constraints placed on a college student I think we set our sites on trying to come up with the most optimal two horn set up. This typically implies one horn for the large ensemble work and a smaller horn for quinet, solo and lighter ensemble stuff. At the moment big horns are very trendy. Unfortunately, the bigger your big horn is the bigger the small one needs to be too so as to keep some overlap. If everyone still played 4/4 contrabass Miraphones(which are very capable in quintet as well as orchestra use) then there wouldn't be the need to build such large F and Eb tubas to fill both the quintet and solo role. It's to the point now where many of the most trendy F tubas sound more like small CCs. When Joe S. makes the occasional reference to the too big F tubas that are currently 'in' I think this is the issue that he is referring to. In my opinion, it isn't that people are trying to find Fs that sound just like their CCs or Ebs or whatever other paranoid idea that gets floated about. Quite the opposite, these new Fs still sound plenty different from the big horns that are being bought. Actually, I think in an ideal world we could all have a set up similar to Jay's: Big and small bass tubas and big and small contrabass tubas.
Once this is understood the issue of Yamaha vs. german style vs. rotor vs. piston can be placed in perspective. These arguments can no longer be seen as someones vieled attempt at finding a horn that sounds more like their CC but instead becomes the normal banter that we see associated with other pitches of tuba as people seek the sound quality and response that suits them best.
Well.. those are my thougts.. sorry for the length. Much of this occurred to me as I typed it out so please forgive me if I deny everything I've said in the morning. What's more, I hope for this to be a springboard for other ideas. I worry sometimes that a lot of ideas get unexpressed around here because they are contrary to a post that was made right away by someone of high esteem on the board(not that I consider myself held in high esteem) or run contrary to conventional wisdom that has been built up over the years without much serious inspection. I generally try to hold back from posting here for that very reason, in hopes of seeing what others have to say, but this topic caught my imagination tonight.
cheers!
joseph 'big thoughts' felton