Posted by Greg Crider on May 08, 2001 at 09:40:06:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Contra-Octave in band playing posted by Rick Denney on May 07, 2001 at 21:31:03:
Does he shift his embouchure? The comment I had about sawtooth waves, etc., was regarding people who do such a radical shift in embouchure that they're playing almost exclusively with a floppy upper lip and with the bottom lip almost off the mouthpiece. Like I said in the first paragraph of the previous post, people who keep a more normal embouchure for the extreme low register keep he richness of their harmonics, where the upper-lip-flop tone gives a much less rich tone. I would be surprised if someone like Gene Pokorny, with his mastery of all aspects of the instrument, would use such a radical shift.
Also, take a look at the wave form of someone with an extreme upper-lip-flop tone on an oscilliscope. The peaks of the fundamentals are often skewed toward the end of the waveform rather than being symmetrically centered, as is usual for sine-based waves. It's far from being a true sawtooth wave, but the skewedness causes a good part of the unpleasantness of tone caused by such a poor technique.