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Hello,

I wanted to ask how often is the 4th valve used on bell front baritones that are commonly used for Oktoberfest and other German festivals. I've seen some videos of this on YouTube and sense it's not too much. Clearly, the baritone is used to provide the bass, rhythmic sound at polkas and has a better range compared to tubas. I'm still a beginner on the baritone.

Your thoughts are appreciated.

I use the fourth valve on a baritone/euphonium for the same reason I use it on a tuba. ... to give me alternate fingerings to clean up some notes that normally use multiple valves on three-valved horns.

The 'bell-front' part doesn't really matter.

I've heard though the 4th valve is needed on baritones if you want to play notes between the middle Bb and F on the bass clef scale.

That horn in that context seems to be used as some sort of bass trombone/solo instrument- crank, wiggle fingers, crank, wiggle fingers. I want to get my hands on an upbell 4 valver to try out.

Hank74 wrote:I've heard though the 4th valve is needed on baritones if you want to play notes between the middle Bb and F on the bass clef scale.

It's true in the very low range, below E below the bass clef (lowest 2nd partial with 3 valves) and above Bb (highest 1st partial.) I've seen this kind of "tenor tuba" playing - a baritone player backing up a couple of big steyrische accordions, for a performance dance group that I think may have been roughly Bavarian. He was using a silver plated oval euphonium, presumably Chinese and with 4 valves.

For a while I had a really odd German bell front baritone with 4 top valves, with a real big bore and some potential for "tenor tuba" applications if it had played better, maybe it was designed for this (though I doubt it.) That thing had little or no "false tone" potential, so the 4th valve was essential, though honestly, it was hell trying to work through those combinations - it's hard to get 5 adjacent tones that are really in tune down there, with the 4th valve.

That said, I think the folks who would really know this stuff don't frequently visit this site.