Posted by Steve C on March 15, 2001 at 04:08:02:
In Reply to: A little experiment posted by Art on March 15, 2001 at 00:43:20:
I'll jump in on this after having an interesting tuning session at my lesson last week (or was it the week before?)
When My instructor and I were tuning to his tuner, I registered a few cents sharp, with my slide in its normal position (I couldn't see the tuner clear from where I sat). This also happens to be where my ear hears the pitch (when playing alone, I can adjust to the pitch of an ensemble with no problems after warm-up a tuning). I think I ended up pulling my slide over 3/4 of an inch, and I still nailed the pitch in the exact same spot as before. Needles to say that should have brought the pitch down quite a bit. We got fed up with trying to get me intune, and just went on...Believe it, or not (Sorry, just watched an episode of Ripley's).
Anyway, point being that for, the most part, pitch is in the head, not always the instrument.
Steve C
PS On the flip side, by bass-bone has an F trigger and dependent E (Yes, E, not Eb or D) To help keep the slide on the horn when going for low B (with its tunings, that made it a really flatted 7th!) I have that tuning slide on my E valve pulled to where its about an E 2/3 flat, so on there it did make a difference, and put low B in an almost practical position :)