Re: Re: Contra-Octave in band playing


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ TubeNet BBS ] [ FAQ ]

Posted by Frederick J. Young on May 08, 2001 at 17:27:42:

In Reply to: Re: Contra-Octave in band playing posted by Rick Denney on May 06, 2001 at 16:20:58:

The period of the lowest frequency, even though small, usually shows up in the waveform as displayed on an oscilloscope. If you would like some free software to measure the spectrum of the tuba, I highly recommend that you download spectrogram version 6 from
http://www.monumental.com/rshorne/gram.html
You shall need a sound card and a microphone. Unless you have a very unusual sounding tuba you shall find the fundamental to be very small compared to most of the harmonics.
Sluring smoothly up one octave removes the low note and all of its even harmonics. When one does a truely good slur you can tell that the even harmonics of the low note stay steady through the slur. The higher note actually may contain a larger net amount of low frequencies than did the one an octave lower! Playing low notes if fun but if you are the only tuba playing C, G and pedal C at the end of Bach may cause the bottom to drop out at the end. Other tubists may be impressed with the pedal C but everybody else will wonder why the bass got weak at the end of the piece.
One of my pet peeves is bass trombonists who play tuba parts FFF. Its all high harmonics. One can get the same effect more easily by hitting a frying pan with a hammer!


Follow Ups: