Posted by Klaus on November 12, 2001 at 19:36:06:
In Reply to: can-o-worms posted by js on November 11, 2001 at 23:30:52:
If you are opening a can-o-worms is beyond me, but you certainly are touching a problem of real music making.
Once being hired a sub in a 40 piece Brit style brass band (yet using 7 French horns) on bass bone, my arm got rotten everytime I hit the 5th position. I was in pretty good shape then, so I was sure my positions were right.
The BBb bass had a 3 valve instrument with a quite long stationary pull on the 3rd slide. When I got him a loaner 4 valve instrument the problem was solved.
When I took up euph in a band with a 5 valve B&S F tuba as the lone bass I consequently adapted to the bass intonation (tuba intonation might be faulty, but it is consistent. WW and small brasses are erratic on that point). But I certainly punked the tubaplayer, a very good friend, when he strayed too far off the main road. Later on we sat next to each other, my axes being the York Master or the Conn 40K.
When I brought in these large and dark basses, the overall intonation of the band improved considerably.
I am not into rotary tubas. I am not fully comfortable with their sound. The theoretical sources I have read tell about bright sound being measurable as a quite open, less saturated, overtone pattern. And a darker and fuller sound being measurable as an overtone pattern with all places being filled with no single overtone protruding too much.
Being less than polite I can not avoid mentioning, that the accordion register imitating a saxophone is one, where the the overtone pattern is deliberately out of tune (more precisely: the "sympathetic"octave is sharp).
Of course I have been out of tune on the large tubas from time to time. However I do not sense this as beats, but as a more general sense of being uncomfortable. From the trombone I am quite used to correct that sense.
What I like about the larger piston basses, is that I feel, that their overtones are in tune, at least according to Pythagoras. I could be envious of the more characteristic sound and penetration of the Rotary Chapter.
I am not. My ears tell me, that the character comes from characteristic detuning in the overtone patterns.
My conclusion would be that the extended need for accuracy in intonation on rotary F tubas comes from some overtones being less Pythagorean in tuning than desirable.
Klaus