Sub Contra Tuba ... HELP???

[Daniel C. Oberloh]

I'm sure someone could fabricate a bell stack and set of slides that would convert a 20J into a FF or EEb subcontrabass tuba.
-Eric

These would only be contrabass? Am I wrong?

Making one is not really as simple as it sounds; the amount of effort is quite extensive and involved. I think it could be an interesting project but it would probably be more easy to start from scratch, provided one had the money for the one-off tooling to make a proper bell or the abillity to make it themself, a skilled and willing metal spinner who could perform the task of spinning the bell properly, the shop space to do the work, the actual abillity and knowhow to fabricate the branches and valves, and the proper engineering and accoustical design. Well lets get started; hey Rick Denny lets get a blueprint going for a CCC tuba

Hey, Harold has an old barn, lets put on a show!!!

Hmmm, my back hurts already......................maybe later.


Daniel C. Oberloh

[Shockwave]

I'd want a subcontrabass tuba to be an octave below a bass tuba, an octave below F or Eb. A tuba an octave below a contrabass should probably be called an octobass.

Adding onto an existing tuba seems a lot simpler to me, for instance:



To build this over-the-shoulder FF horn from hell all you would have to do is build a male mold from a pipe, plywood, spray foam, and bondo to make a composite bell from fiberglass or carbon fiber. With a more complicated mold one could wrap the bell around the existing body of the horn. It would be a relatively fast, cheap way to experiment.

-Eric

[Shockwave]

Harold,

to quote myself,

I'm sure someone could fabricate a bell stack and set of slides that would convert a 20J into a FF or EEb subcontrabass tuba.
-Eric

[windshieldbug]

To build this over-the-shoulder FF horn from hell all you would have to do is build a male mold from a pipe, plywood, spray foam, and bondo to make a composite bell from fiberglass or carbon fiber. With a more complicated mold one could wrap the bell around the existing body of the horn. It would be a relatively fast, cheap way to experiment

Trouble is, it only works if you use the bell garland

[Donn]

MAN.... What have YOU been smoking?

I just want to point out, for the record, that I suggested basically the same thing, three weeks ago in this thread, except at the time the subject was Bb subcontrabass, so it was 20 feet of fiberglass. An F would be more like 8, starting with a 20J or other large 3 valve detachable bell Bb. That sounds like a fairly trivial matter, I bet some enterprising reader will have done it by next weekend. You could probaby use any semi-rigid flexible material, even tar paper, to make a straight cone to get an initial idea how this is going to work, and the final bell should be made of whatever is lightest. By the time you're getting decent F partials, you can easily justify the cost of a couple extension slides (hopefully you can reuse at least one of the old slides on a different valve.)

Tubas are absurdly easy to make, compared to physically and acoustically much more complex woodwinds, and there are subcontra woodwinds on the market today. Eppelsheim in Munich makes a 23 foot long saxophone. If there aren't subcontrabass tubas, it's not because they can't be made, but because tuba players don't want or can't deal with the result.

[windshieldbug]

tuba players don't want or can't deal with the result.

Besides, woodwind players will buy ALMOST anything

[Donn]

can't deal with the result.

1. Expensive to build. Once time and resources are committed to this type of project, you will need to sell the instrument at more than 100K US to make it worth the effort. All of the tooling for the bell and the big bows would be one-off.

I don't have any figures, but I'm confident that the much fancier and more complex Eppelsheim Eb contrabass saxophone is way less than 100K, probably less than half that, and it seems to be a commercially viable product. The Bb contrabass (the 23 foot one) is newer and less of a known quantity.

2. Ergonomically unsound. All of the previous designs require four hands or the player to stand while playing. The design using the 20J as a starting point would be completely unbalanced. Some player is going to support an 8' stack in his lap? This horn would hit the ground before a mouthpiece could be placed in the receiver.

It's a design challenge, all right, but note that a string bass wouldn't fit many of your ergonomic expectations, either.

3. No interest. If there were some interest, the Chinese would build them much faster than we can.

The Chinese are not the first to build anything.

4. No parts. Once you have one, what are you going to play?

Octava basso, I imagine. If there were parts, who can count that many ledger lines anyway?

5. Difficult to travel with. Walt Johnson would need to build the granddaddy of all cases for this one as well as provide a trailer hitch so you could pull it.

I don't have a case for any of my tubas, so can I have a subcontrabass tuba?

None of your objections are unique in the history of successful instrument designs. The only real issue is whether it's worthwhile - can a tuba player handle a subcontra instrument and make it do something useful. I'm guessing that's somewhat in doubt, but it's a testable hypothesis.

[Donn]

I really think the volume of air and flow rate required to make a 'subcontrabass tuba' is basically outside the everyday abilities of most humans.

Sure, but so is the usual Bb contrabass, we're told, and indeed I find that it takes some practice.

I guess an F contra compared to Bb would be like Bb compared to Eb. An F an octave below the staff would take similar effort to play, but would have more definition and presence. If you owned one and had the motivation to play it, I don't think it would be out of the question.

Here's my theory - the problem is, notes that low aren't that useful, so there's no real incentive to make them great. Saxophones go there because they already normally play right to the bottom of their range, so they don't have any other option for lower notes. Tubas have plenty of lesser-quality stuff beneath their primary range, and as long as no one can tell the difference anyway, who cares.

[Shockwave]

Who wants one?

-Eric

[windshieldbug]

Where's the leadpipe and why is the valve block upside down?

Haven't you ever heard of the "think method"?

[iiipopes]

Actually, it's not. The whole picture is upside down. Since this is a basement trench dwelling feel it before you hear it instrument, the bell is pointed down on purpose to get the earth moving, or transform the basement of the auditorium in which it will be played into a secondary Hemholtz-style resonator.

[Shockwave]

Where's the leadpipe and why is the valve block upside down?

It's an imagination aid, Harold.

-Eric

[Rick Denney]

But they may be more accurate than Wikipedia (there's only so much Rick can set the world straight on, and so little time...).

I only edit the parts I know about. No expert me on sub-contrabass tubas. Mike, you should update the article on that subject. If you do, explain what you did in the comment list.

Rick "who has also left the jazz section pretty much alone" Denney

[Rick Denney]

What about the acoustic properties? Could they possibly be musical?

The frequencies produced in the octave below what is already available with contrabass tubas is largely sub-sonic. Thus, even if the sound included the fundamental (which I doubt it would unless you had a 4" mouthpiece and a face to match), the harmonics will be all that anyone hears. The spacing between the overtones will be on intervals that are also subsonic, and the difference tones will therefore not be heard, and that will make the sound either rattly, noisy, or both. I suspect the effect will only hope to be as useful as the 16 Hz double pedal C in Encounters, which is usually made by timed flutter tounging from what I understand. And I think it's fair to say that this is a special effect more than a tone.

Take the difference in clarity between, say, an F tuba and a Bb tuba, or more to the point, between a euphonium and a Bb tuba, and extrapolate that another octave. Will that be musically useful? I have my doubts.

To achieve the same level of power, Fred Young told us long ago that we need to maintain the dimensionless ratios, such as mouthpiece diameter to bore, cup volume to tuba volume, bore to bell, bell to length, and so on. If we start with a Flugelhorn and expand it to contrabass tuba length, the bore would be 2" and the mouthpiece twice that. Obviously, that could not be played by a human. A contrabass would be even worse--a 4" bore and an 8" mouthpiece. So tubas have relatively small bores and mouthpieces compared to higher conical brasses, just to bring them into the humanoid range. The bore of a sub-contrabass would need a similar bore to a contrabass to be blowable. The reduced ratio of bore to length or bore to bell would probably drain even more of the fundamental and lower overtones out of the sound.

Take a good flugelhorn solo recording and play it at 1/4 speed. That's what a scaled contrabass tuba would sound like. We dream of such power, heh, heh. A tuba is compromised even compared to a euphonium, having something like a 25% larger bore but 100% more length.

I have a feeling that the sound produced by a sub-contrabass is going to be rather wheezy and grainy. Maybe that would improve if you spent 150 years refining the design as we have done with contrabasses (not to mention 150 years of improvements in performance practice). And getting good acoustic resonance is going to be a challenge. Bb at the top of the staff would have to be buzzed for 16 pulses before a reinforcing pulse returned from the bell reflection to establish resonance. That requires extreme embouchure control and pitch sense, just as it does palying a double-high Bb on a BBb tuba.

I think this project is a lot easier in Photoshop than in brass or fiberglass.

Rick "already overcommitted to hopeless projects" Denney

[Donn]

The frequencies produced in the octave below what is already available with contrabass tubas is largely sub-sonic.

Just to be careful with the points of discussion, I think we're talking at this point about F subcontrabass more than Bb. And very likely they wouldn't play much if any lower than you can play on a Bb contrabass.

Take the difference in clarity between, say, an F tuba and a Bb tuba, or more to the point, between a euphonium and a Bb tuba, and extrapolate that another octave. Will that be musically useful? I have my doubts.

Take the difference in clarity between a Bb below the staff, played on an Eb bass and a Bb contrabass, then picture that at F an octave below the staff. That's the Shock-o-phone.

To achieve the same level of power, Fred Young told us long ago that we need to maintain the dimensionless ratios, such as mouthpiece diameter to bore, cup volume to tuba volume, bore to bell, bell to length, and so on. If we start with a Flugelhorn and expand it to contrabass tuba length, the bore would be 2" and the mouthpiece twice that. Obviously, that could not be played by a human. A contrabass would be even worse--a 4" bore and an 8" mouthpiece. So tubas have relatively small bores and mouthpieces compared to higher conical brasses, just to bring them into the humanoid range. The bore of a sub-contrabass would need a similar bore to a contrabass to be blowable. The reduced ratio of bore to length or bore to bell would probably drain even more of the fundamental and lower overtones out of the sound.

Could it be that Dr. Young is simply wrong, or at least taken out of context? Does the prescribed ratio obtain anywhere? It looks to me like even the jump from flugelhorn to alto loses several millimeters on mouthpiece size. And Bb tuba bore sizes vary maybe 20% without severe injury to the acoustics.

Not that I'm a potential customer for the Shock-o-phone, but only because as I mentioned, I think the low range of the Bb tuba is superfluous and a better tool for making those notes isn't interesting. But people who like really big tubas might disagree with this.

[iiipopes]

OK, to put it all together, the increase in diameter of the bore and the size of the mouthpiece from BBb to FFF or EEEb would be about the same as the increase in size on pipe organ reed stops, as your mouth and mouthpiece serve the same functions as the reed and reed block, and the tubing, if it was all straightened out, would be roughly the same length and taper.

As far as the diaphone, A late friend of mine bought a Robert-Morton dirt cheap as it was being thrown out in 1969, built a party room on the back of his house, and we all enjoyed it immensely over the years, as he was a confirmed bachelor in the old traditional sense. Yes, it had an octave of diaphones underneath the "Diapason" stop, and it was fun to rattle the neighbor's windows with!

[Rick Denney]

Could it be that Dr. Young is simply wrong, or at least taken out of context? Does the prescribed ratio obtain anywhere? It looks to me like even the jump from flugelhorn to alto loses several millimeters on mouthpiece size. And Bb tuba bore sizes vary maybe 20% without severe injury to the acoustics.

I'll let you be the one to suggest that to him. You'd better be on your A game when you do.

But I submit that we don't have any way to evaluate "severe injury". We know what a contrabass sounds like and we have used that sound as the basis for defining the music we can make. It may well be that a tuba scaled as Dr. Young suggests would not sound desirable to us, even though it would sound like a recording of a flugelhorn played back at quarter speed.

Conversely, try playing recorded tuba sound at quadruple speed. I think you'll agree that a flugelhorn player would think the sound too bright.

We need that brilliance to keep the sound from turning to mud or getting too woofy. Tubas have a healthy range of overtones that give them their characteristic sound--more healthy than the smaller instruments.

And there's the rub with a sub-contra. When I play a low Bb, I end up without about 12 octaves worth of audible overtones, spaced at 58-Hz intervals. Some are stronger than others, to be sure. But I hear "low Bb" because those harmonics are 58 Hz apart, creating a low Bb difference tone in my ear.

A 29-Hz pedal Bb is right at the floor of audible, in terms of the fundamental. It has a richer sound than the 58-Hz Bb because it contains a bunch of overtones not present in the 58-Hz sound, such as overtones at 87 Hz, 145 Hz, and so on. They create more density of frequency content, and also create a difference tone of 29 Hz. But I'll bet they have nearly no fundamental actually in the sound and I'll be the upper harmonics are stronger than with the 58-Hz Bb.

The 29-Hz Bb would be the second partial on a sub-contra (and I'm sticking with the Bb sub-contra for this discussion). If you could play it loud, would the sound do anything for anyone? You'd be adding a LOT of harmonic content into the sound of the group, creating a LOT more tones for them to try to tune to. I think clarity would suffer.

Try this: On a BBb tuba, play a double-high Bb. Then, play the same pitch on a euphonium. Which sound has more clarity and strength? For 99.9% of the players out there, the tuba loses its characteristic sound up that high, and the euphonium is still in its singing register. Even if you are Pat Sheridan and can play a beautiful double-high Bb on a BBb tuba, you'll still sound clearer and stronger on a euphonium. If it happens between a BBb tuba and a euphonium, it will also happen between a BBBb tuba and a BBb tuba. It would be like the recording I heard of NYPO under Bernstein playing a kids concert where a 'cello solo was played on double bass. The bass player was good, but it was still not nearly as clean as it would have been on 'cello.

Who needs the bottom 1000 Hz or so filled up with harmonics every 29 Hz? If you can't hear the difference tone, then it will sound like noise. Noise = wheezy.

Rick "not a player who is compelled to drop everything an octave, even if he could" Denney

[Shockwave]

What about the acoustic properties? Could they possibly be musical?

The frequencies produced in the octave below what is already available with contrabass tubas is largely sub-sonic. Thus, even if the sound included the fundamental (which I doubt it would unless you had a 4" mouthpiece and a face to match), the harmonics will be all that anyone hears. The spacing between the overtones will be on intervals that are also subsonic, and the difference tones will therefore not be heard, and that will make the sound either rattly, noisy, or both. I suspect the effect will only hope to be as useful as the 16 Hz double pedal C in Encounters, which is usually made by timed flutter tounging from what I understand. And I think it's fair to say that this is a special effect more than a tone.

Take the difference in clarity between, say, an F tuba and a Bb tuba, or more to the point, between a euphonium and a Bb tuba, and extrapolate that another octave. Will that be musically useful? I have my doubts.

To achieve the same level of power, Fred Young told us long ago that we need to maintain the dimensionless ratios, such as mouthpiece diameter to bore, cup volume to tuba volume, bore to bell, bell to length, and so on. If we start with a Flugelhorn and expand it to contrabass tuba length, the bore would be 2" and the mouthpiece twice that. Obviously, that could not be played by a human. A contrabass would be even worse--a 4" bore and an 8" mouthpiece. So tubas have relatively small bores and mouthpieces compared to higher conical brasses, just to bring them into the humanoid range. The bore of a sub-contrabass would need a similar bore to a contrabass to be blowable. The reduced ratio of bore to length or bore to bell would probably drain even more of the fundamental and lower overtones out of the sound.

Take a good flugelhorn solo recording and play it at 1/4 speed. That's what a scaled contrabass tuba would sound like. We dream of such power, heh, heh. A tuba is compromised even compared to a euphonium, having something like a 25% larger bore but 100% more length.

I have a feeling that the sound produced by a sub-contrabass is going to be rather wheezy and grainy. Maybe that would improve if you spent 150 years refining the design as we have done with contrabasses (not to mention 150 years of improvements in performance practice). And getting good acoustic resonance is going to be a challenge. Bb at the top of the staff would have to be buzzed for 16 pulses before a reinforcing pulse returned from the bell reflection to establish resonance. That requires extreme embouchure control and pitch sense, just as it does palying a double-high Bb on a BBb tuba.

I think this project is a lot easier in Photoshop than in brass or fiberglass.

Rick "already overcommitted to hopeless projects" Denney

There are notes "available" to existing tubas that don't sound as good as they would on a lower pitched horn. A large 5 valved F tuba has available to it a low G, but to get the horn down to that pitch requires a lot of small diameter cylindrical tubing to be added via the valves. Though it may have the same length as a BBb tuba with the 3rd valve depressed, the BBb tuba has a much larger air column and can make a lot more low frequency energy that the tuba is known for. Similarly, that BBb tuba if it has 4 valves can play a low C, but a EEb subcontrabass tuba would be able to play that C with a lot more authority. The tradeoff is clarity of attacks, and that is where the subcontrabass would suffer. Having just listened to some recordings of a drum and bugle corps where good players were using GG contrabass bugles only a whole step higher than the theoretical subcontrabass tuba range, Im encouraged.

The amount of fundamental in the sound has little or nothing to do with mouthpiece diameter. If the mouthpiece is large enough that the lips can vibrate at the right pitch it is large enough for the instrument. Many players can get pedal Gs and Fs to come out of their tubas, so I think the conventional mouthpiece diameter would be sufficient. The main purpose of a subcontrabass tuba would be to produce fundamental in the range below low F where BBb tubas run out of steam. It wouldn't make purely fundamental, but some nice tubaish combination of overtones.

A well designed EEb subcontra tuba could produce substantial fundamental at least down to what we consider pedal C, and probably a good amount down to A. Contrabass tubas can play those notes, but they have negligible fundamental and a pretty thin sound compared to the rest of the range of the horn just as an Eb tuba does in the low range of a BBb horn. To me the idea of blowing into an instrument and making pipe organ bass is appealing. It would be interesting to know if playing false tones and pedal tones on such an instrument is humanly possible.

If you slow down a recording of a flugelhorn by a factor of 4, you are simulating a flugelhorn scaled up by a factor of 4 played by a 24 foot tall giant with lips the size of butt cheeks. An instrument needs to be scaled to the capabilities of a human being, and for that reason the bore diameter of instruments scales up more slowly than the rest of the instrument. If people had mouths the size of nostrils, the flugelhorn would probably look a lot like a scaled down tuba. Also, the ratio of bore to legth or bore to bell size has nothing to do with the amount of fundamental in the sound. Adding additional valve tubing beyond a 1&3 combination robs a typical tuba of fundamental because the fundamental is tuned lower than the bugle can amplify. Small bore tubas can have the same proportion of fundamental in their sound as larger bore equivalents, but at a softer volume.


150 years of development is almost meaningless. My 1850's Eb bass saxhorn plays just fine and has a beautiful tone with decent intonation despite the instrument only having been invented a few years before this example was made. Though modern Eb tubas are different, they aren't necessarily better. Actually I used the bell of the saxhorn as the bell of the frankenphone, it just looked right.

I think a subcontrabass tuba would sound like a very low tuba with a mellow sound when quiet and a blatty sound when pushed like every other tuba. It would have bubbly attacks, but an organ-like bottom end.

-Eric

[Donn]

We need that brilliance to keep the sound from turning to mud or getting too woofy. Tubas have a healthy range of overtones that give them their characteristic sound--more healthy than the smaller instruments.

And there's the rub with a sub-contra. When I play a low Bb, I end up without about 12 octaves worth of audible overtones, spaced at 58-Hz intervals. Some are stronger than others, to be sure. But I hear "low Bb" because those harmonics are 58 Hz apart, creating a low Bb difference tone in my ear.

Isn't 58 Hz the Bb below the 2nd ledger line - the 9 foot 2nd partial on a Bb contrabass tuba? The difference tone would be the fundamental at 29 Hz? Wouldn't this also be true when you play the F right below the staff, etc. - all your open notes would tend to come out 29 Hz Bb?

A 29-Hz pedal Bb is right at the floor of audible, in terms of the fundamental. It has a richer sound than the 58-Hz Bb because it contains a bunch of overtones not present in the 58-Hz sound, such as overtones at 87 Hz, 145 Hz, and so on. They create more density of frequency content, and also create a difference tone of 29 Hz. But I'll bet they have nearly no fundamental actually in the sound and I'll be the upper harmonics are stronger than with the 58-Hz Bb.

Hm, you're saying a 2nd partial Bb doesn't have the 3rd partial F, etc.? You're playing in an 18 foot tube! Your partials will be 9' Bb, 6' F, 4.5' Bb, 3.6' ~D, etc., and it doesn't matter whether you're playing the fundamental or 2nd partial - right?

The 29-Hz Bb would be the second partial on a sub-contra (and I'm sticking with the Bb sub-contra for this discussion). If you could play it loud, would the sound do anything for anyone? You'd be adding a LOT of harmonic content into the sound of the group, creating a LOT more tones for them to try to tune to. I think clarity would suffer.

Try this: On a BBb tuba, play a double-high Bb. Then, play the same pitch on a euphonium. Which sound has more clarity and strength? For 99.9% of the players out there, the tuba loses its characteristic sound up that high, and the euphonium is still in its singing register.

Well, sure you wouldn't show up with a subcontrabass so you could play the high stuff. But why would you compare them at that end? Isn't the point you were just trying to make, that you're going to get a better, more useful 18 foot Bb from the fundamental of an 18 foot tuba, than the 2nd partial of a 36 foot tuba? So following your logic, a euphonium would be a better contrabass instrument, because it likewise would produce fewer extraneous partials?

[Rick Denney]

Well, sure you wouldn't show up with a subcontrabass so you could play the high stuff. But why would you compare them at that end?

Because maybe that's where the music is written. Nearly all music written for tuba is high on a sub-contrabass. I've never seen anything below a 32-Hz C in any music except the Kraft, or below the D above that for any music I've been asked to play. And they were in the middle of works that included bunches of notes that would be above the fourth partial on a sub. The contrabass tuba already covers the audible range. Let the percussion section make the noise.

Back to the 58-Hz low Bb. If you play that note (yes, it's the second partial on a BBb tuba), you will get harmonic overtones at 116 Hz, 174 Hz, 232 Hz, 290 Hz, 348 Hz, and so on up to the 800 or 900's. The difference tone between any pair of those harmonic overtones is a multiple of 58 Hz. Enharmonic overtones may create other difference tones, but they are not strong by my measurement. (By "not strong", I mean I less than the -54dB floor on my measurement).

If you play a 29-Hz Bb (the fundamental of a BBb tuba), you'll get harmonic overtones at 58 Hz, 87 Hz, 116 Hz, 145 Hz, 174 Hz, 203 Hz, 232 Hz, and so on. Many of these double what's in the sound of a 58-Hz Bb, but there are harmonic overtones at 87 Hz and 145 Hz, etc., that are not. The difference between any pair of those overtones is a multiple of 29 Hz. That's why we hear a pedal Bb as a pedal Bb, even though the fundamental is almost nonexistent in the sound.

I can't play a good enough pedal to conduct the test, but I did do the comparison between the 58-Hz Bb and the 116-Hz Bb.

http://www.rickdenney.com/the_tuba_sound.htm

Rick "not theorizing" Denney