Low notes

[TubaRay]

Rick "thinking that tubas don't sound like tubas without the higher overtones" Denney

So that's the problem!

[MikeMason]

I find Wes Jacobs' Low Etudes helpful.They are rochuts going down by half step.Incrementalism is a useful tool in improving any skill.Yes, i know you should be able to sight transpose any rochut,but i'd rather use my limited brain power on the specific playing problem at hand than on transposition.Encore music publishers has these etudes i think.

[Donn]

A pedal C (that is--first partial C--the fundamental of an open CC tuba), is 32 Hz. A double-pedal C is 16 Hz, and won't resonate in the insrument, though the upper harmonics of such a buzz might.

So, I won't bring this up a third time in this thread, but ... is this what "pedal" means to everyone?

For example on my Bb sousaphone, a 1st partial C is one octave lower, 16.3 hz. (I don't mind telling you, I'm not strong on this note, but I play mostly Eb tuba anyway.) I'm too lazy to count ledger lines, maybe 9 or 10. But anyway, according to this notion of what "pedal" means, you don't know what a "pedal C" means until you know what tuba it's going to be played on.

As opposed to the convention described here (same page I linked a couple of posts ago), where you're in pedal territory below the 2nd ledger line, whatever the instrument.

I know this doesn't directly help us all be better tuba players, but it can't hurt to have some common vocabulary if we're going to talk about low notes.

In regard to the pedal tone, do you not start referring to tones below the end of an organ keyboard (C2?) as pedal?

btw, I never knew what the frequency was of the low register (or the high for that matter) was of a tuba. What is the range in Hertz?

Looks to me like, on the page I mentioned, C2 does indeed mark the upper limit of the pedal range. Don't know about organ keyboards. C2 is 65.4 Hz, piano goes to A 27.5 Hz.

[Donn]

In the pipe organ world it is not uncommon to have reed pipes that are 1/2 or 1/4 the length of their musical pitch.
example a 16' bassoon that is only 8' long at low C
Resonators are only that, they can only support the tone, and pipes that are playing at their pitch are more efficient at tone support than a fractional length resonator.

Isn't that a property of the pipe's particular acoustics, too, as opposed to a brass instrument? A clarinet's low register is an octave lower than you'd expect by comparison with a saxophone, because it's acoustically a "stopped pipe", as I understand it -- like some organ pipes? But not tubas, though maybe something like it could explain why an 18 foot tuba can play a 13 foot "false" note as well as it can.

[iiipopes]

The clarinet acts like it does acoustically because it is theoretically a cylindrical tube, which has the effect of truncating the even overtones much like a stopped pipe organ pipe. So instead of an octave register key, you have to have an octave and a fifth (or 12th) register key.

Brass instruments are to one degree or another conical, so they reinforce all overtones.

[Rick Denney]

The whole description of notes at or below the fundamental pitch of the tube (instrument) as 'pedal notes' is really inaccurate.

Only to organ builders, heh, heh.

Words communicate as long as the speaker and the listener agree on the meaning. Most people think of the word "pedal", when applied to tubas, as being the fundamental pitch of the bugle (whether or not valve tubing is part of the bugle for the note in question). But it is true that this is a term borrowed from organs, and generally meaning really low notes.

To answer Donn, I've played low F's (four ledger lines) for decades and have never claimed it was a pedal tone. But when I play that note on my F tuba, I do claim it is a pedal tone. I have always thought of "pedal" as meaning the same thing as "fundamental pitch". I think that's what most people of my age at least also think the word means in the brass instrument context. If it has been expanded to mean everything below the low tuning note on a contrabass tuba, then my pedal register just got a lot better.

As to the tubing resonating on the halfwave, be careful about drawing too many, um, parallels between the conical tubing of tubas and the straight tubes in an organ. The taper changes the pitches that resonate, and dramatically so. The second harmonic overtone (an octave above the buzz's fundamental frequency) is quite weak in tuba sound because of the shape of the taper. That means that buzzing at 16 Hz on a CC tuba won't provide much resonant reinforcement at 32 Hz. As I said, you'll have to depend on the higher overtones to help stabilize the resonance. Of course, not many people can buzz their lips accurately at 16 Hz in any case, so it's hard to know by experience what is really happening.

Rick "noting again that Fred Young thinks the false tone might be the true fundamental on a conical contrabass tuba" Denney

[Donn]

The clarinet acts like it does acoustically because it is theoretically a cylindrical tube, which has the effect of truncating the even overtones much like a stopped pipe organ pipe. So instead of an octave register key, you have to have an octave and a fifth (or 12th) register key.

Brass instruments are to one degree or another conical, so they reinforce all overtones.

Ah, I see I should have compared the clarinet to a flute instead of saxophone. The flute's closer to cylindrical than the clarinet, I believe?

[Rick Denney]

True, taper does effect harmonic development, but in the pipes I was speaking of in regards to fractional length resonators (1/2 length, 1/4 length, etc), are typically conical in shape.

Of course, it isn't just that there is taper, but the shape of the taper. A bessel horn resonates different harmonics than a straight taper. In fact, they are almost opposite of each other in their resonance characteristics. Tubas (at least those that came after the very earliest models) are somewhere in the middle between a straight taper and a bessel horn.

And, of course, this is an esoteric exchange unrelated to the original point, about which we agree. I think you attached more precision to my words than I intended, heh, heh.

Rick "who learned from Benade and Fletcher/Rossing to assume nothing about resonance characteristics based only on length" Denney

[Donn]

In these instruments the musical tone (and vibrating column of air) is created by either a vibrating reed or a pair of vibrating lips. So all the resonator does is enhance the sound that has already been created. In organ flue pipes (open or stopped), the pitch is created by a vibrating column of air that is TOTALLY dependant on the body of the pipe to determine the pitch.

At least in the case of reeds, note that there's little real difference between a flute or recorder, and a saxophone or oboe.

As far as 'false tones' go, I use them, I LOVE them (super for a really soft 'pedal' c), but I don't know how they work.

I'd like to know what overtones Rick's analyzer would find in them. Would they be in a series from the natural open fundamental, except the bottom? Probably, because otherwise there would be all kinds of phantom notes farther up in the range?