trombone sonorities

[ken k]

I agree for the most part. Another place where the large trombone is out of place is in the concert band where the large trombone sounds too close to the euphonium and you lose the different color of the trombone sound.

I rarely have students buy .547 horns, especially since most of them really can not handle them. I love the sound of the 3B since I grew up playing one back in the day. I do like the sound of my Benge 190 which is a big bore horn, but that horn plays more like a King than a Bach or Edwards. It has a sweeter sound and will edge out a bit sooner than other horns.

If a kid just gotta have a bigger horn with an F attachment I will try to get them on a Bach 36. Pretty nice horn for all around playing.

ken k

[Chuck(G)]

Trombone players are playing bigger instruments to produce more volume with less edge. A large bore instrument gets edgy or brassy at a higher decibel level. Modern orchestras are louder in every way than their predecessors. Bigger halls, bigger orchestras, bigger instruments, louder instruments.

...and yet the strings like 2- or 3-century old hunks of wood to saw on. To my own ears, there's still nothing more interesting in texture and delicacy than a chamber orchestra or string quartet. It's too bad that the brass has gotten so loud that the wire choir and woodwinds are hard put to keep up with the cannonade.

[Norm Pearson]

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[Mudman]

With the enormous trombones found in orchestras today it's easy to get a warm sound but not the edgy sound.

Modern trombones can produce that "good edge" sound, but the difference is that it is more consistent. On older horns, certain notes pop out in a somewhat uncontrolled manner. This is usually when you will get the hand, when a conductor notices something that is different from the rest of the sound your section is making--one or two attacks that stick out or too much edge on one particular note. The big horns even everything out, with no notes breaking up at extreme dynamics. Attacks are rounded off (it is very hard to play crisply on a large Edwards setup, when compared to a lighter horn like a Yamaha 682G) and everything is sanitized.

At a masterclass given by Joe Alessi, I asked "how loud would you play at an audition?" Joe said, "well, let's see . . ." He played part of Zarathustra, standing about ten feet away from me. This was on his Edwards setup. I could not tell how loudly he was playing. The sound was so consistent that it could have been mp or ffff. Clean and impressive, but not exciting in the way an opera singer goes for a climactic note at the limit of their range. The only giveaway as to the dynamics of the excerpt was how much my head hurt. The sound was so intense, I thought my head was going to explode. My face went beet red, and my ears stung. From this, I concluded that Alessi was playing ffff with a surgically-clean sound.

[Dylan King]

Hey Norm,

Didn't Roger Bobo play in a Mirafone 184 in the Phil? I wonder what the trombonists were using at that time. The orchestra has never sounded better. Whatever you guys are playing, your doing it right.

Have you guys made any horn related adjustments to the new hall?

-DK