Core Sound

[gregsundt]

I will assume that your teacher is referring to what many would call a sound "with lots of core". Part of the difficulty is that we have different words or phrases to describe the same thing. What one hearer calls "dark", another considers a "bright" tone. So be careful not to put too much stock in a descriptive phrase.

Over time, with practice, you develop a sound with lots of presence; that carries without breaking up. It is a focused, muscular sound (there goes another catch phrase) that doesn't have to be "loud" to be heard. That, in my experience, is a sound with lots of core. Not to open a new debate, but the Alexander tubas have traditionally been admired for their "core-y" sound. The M-W Thor is probably the epitome of CORE. But I had to develop lots of core on a little Cerveny 681 before I was able to buy a Rudy, so don't think of it as buying the right tuba, either.

I will likely stand corrected on a few of these thoughts, but here is one you can take to the bank. Keep listening and don't give up just because you didn't get the desired result at your last lesson. Sound development is a lifelong pursuit. You don't just "study" it, pass the test, and move on. Listen to great players. Record yourself. Let your teacher be your sounding board. It will come.

[Rick Denney]

The problem was that I did not fully understand what to do or what it will sound like when I do it. On my next lessson, I wanted to show him that I was working on what he wanted and was making progress.

I'll pass along a description I received from Mike Sanders many years ago. He would have me buzz on the mouthpiece, and try to focus my airstream such that the air "came to a point" several inches beyond the end of the mouthpiece shank. It's a visual trick to try and make sure the sound is going through the mouthpiece rather than merely into it. Think of the flame of a propane torch--the flame is good when it comes to a stable, bright blue point, instead of a wobbly yellow flame. That's just another trick to help visualize a non-visual concept. You might try this on a loose mouthpiece for a couple of minutes; that was how Mike used it with me. I find that playing on a bare mouthpiece exposes more truth quicker than playing on the instrument, but it is not necessarily a good tool for correcting what it exposes. After a few seconds focusing the sound on the mouthpiece alone, put it back in the tuba and see if the sound has gained richness and intensity. If so, that's probably what your teacher is describing.

Rick "still incorporating things heard and not understood from teachers over 20 years ago" Denney

[J Stowe]

Just to make sure, we aren't talking about an attempt to have more fundamental and less overtones, right?..

[Rick Denney]

Just to make sure, we aren't talking about an attempt to have more fundamental and less overtones, right?..

I surely hope not. That will make the sound dead and lifeless.

Bloke hasn't hear the term "core" much from his high-end teachers, but I'll bet he has heard the term "color". In my view, color results from overtones. But there's a difference between blatty and dull sounds with lots of overtones and rich and colorful sounds with lots of (different) overtones. A sine wave (no overtones) is almost inaudible at low frequencies.

Rick "always trying for a rich, colorful sound with some zip in it" Denney

[peter birch]

Experts are great people and great to be around, unfortunately, it is often the case that experts are not actually any good at teaching and specifically they use language (jargon) to describe things that the rest of us do not and cannot understand. This sounds like one these.
Someone has a concept of a sound that cannot easily be put into words that a student (or even other competent and proficient players ) cannot understand. We may know what it means and even recognise it when we hear it, butwe can't define it.
A couple of psychologists (Dreyfuss and Dreyfuss) described a skills acquisition model of learning that explains it more fully.

[rocksanddirt]

Interesting topic. I would suggest that a 'core sound' is one (as suggested here) that is full, penetrating, and solid. The sort of tone you get when you have done the long tones, the buzzing excersises, the slow intervals, the lip slurs, and what not to keep the edge, airyness, buzzy, uncentered sounds out of your playing in all conditions and areas of your range.

(time to get out the mouthpiece and buzz to work)....

[windshieldbug]

The problem was that I did not fully understand what to do or what it will sound like when I do it.

I submit that there lies the problem. If you work on what other people think he meant without even being there, you have little to no chance of accomplishing anything.

Do not leave a lesson until you are sure what you are being told, and what you should do as a result. If he was trying to tell you something entirely different, there's no way that the Freak Jury® will ever guess, even if they could actually hear your playing.

Lessons are about communication. And you are trying to dance about architecture.

[pulseczar]

My concept of core sound is a strong fundamental with the octaves above it to project and reinforce the pitch.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my theory is that it's the upper octaves of a note that catches the listener's attention. The fundamental of a note on a tuba is low and just by itself would be hard for a listener to catch because the human ear is not made to respond as effectively in that range than say, a trumpet range. By having the octaves in our tone strong, it gives the note a stronger presence in the ear's money range and the ear can track it down to the fundamental.

Similar to power chords.

[dwaskew]

I know someone must have been waiting for it.......so here..........

[jeopardymaster]

I've been on the sidelines a while on this one, and think it's better to stay there, but let me put this thought in play anyway.

Who in our respective opinions do we feel have more or less "core" to their sound?

To my ear, Chester Schmitz definitely has it. But he's also probably closest to my inner tubist's emulation of how I want to sound. I submit that my personal concept of "core" means less than my own subjective evaluation of my sound compared to my ideal. I mostly fall way short, by the way.

That may be the more worthwhile exercise to the young student versus a term of art. Is your ideal Roger Bobo? Gene Pokorny? John Fletcher? Ron Bishop? Pat Sheridan? Sam Pilafian? Carol Jantsch? Pick someone you can listen to, a lot. Better in person, but if that isn't possible, then pick someone who has put out lots of recordings.

If you come close, it won't matter a whole lot what you call your sound, but it'll be damned good.

OK, I'll shut up now.

[Tom B.]

CKTuba wrote:

Basically, to me anyhow, a "core sound" is a full bodied sound produced by an extremely efficient use of air and "buzz" that projects with very little effort.

This gets very close to my concept of "core". It is a combination of resonance between lips, air, and horn, not unlike finding that sweet spot when blowing air over a bottle. When achieved, the sound is alive and playing is effortless--almost like it happens by itself. I got there once upon a time on French horn. Now, many years later, I'm searching for it on tuba.

Tom

[k001k47]

I hope that by playing with "core", one achieves good intonation...but that's another subject altogether.
They say, "play with CORE" but really mean "Stop sounding so BAD" .
I'm joking.

To me, playing with core is playing with presence:
it's a sound that "fills" the room one plays in.

[MikeMason]

I'll agree with rocksanddirt.I can't completely express it in words ,but if you do enough listening,long tones in all ranges,buzzing exercises,slow intervals,and listening(to yourself as well as your hero),you will start to have it...and it is GOOD.

[imperialbari]

I can be a bit more specific:
The fairly strong presence of the 12th partial adds (at least to me) quite a bit of positive sophistication to the sound of the tuba. (As an example, this would be an 'F' 1-1/2 octaves above a "played" 'Bb'.)

That frequency being one and a half octaves above the basic sounding pitch, (again) it is difficult for me to encompass that particular characteristic (along with some others) while uttering or thinking of the word "core".

A most interesting specification, especially from a guy who has a daughter playing the oboe at a quite respectable professional level.

During my antediluvian college time one of our teachers made a course in sound sculpturing for all music students. It might be there that I got the information, that when the oboe sounds its tuning A, then that A=440Hz note it not the most prominent partial of the sound. Neither is the octave at 880Hz. E=1320Hz provides 45% of the acoustic energy emitted from that note nominally being at 440Hz.

This fits very well with bloke’s notion, as it is not really the 12th partial-function he hears. It is the octave-plus-a-fifth above the actually played note. Fifths in chords are known to carry through so well, that they easily are overdone. This fifth in the tuba sound is what makes the melodic component of the tuba line stand out. Good in solos and in complex bass lines like those that can be heard through the middle link in bloke’s signature.

By nature I am not too happy with the fifth-components of my sound being too prominent, when playing conical brasses, whereas they are a much more natural part of my desired trombone sound. I rather prefer the thirds in form of tenths and higher being part of my sound on euphonium and tuba.

What I may have done best as a musician has been to make “non-virtuoso“ amateur ensembles and choirs sound very good, far beyond their supposed technical skills. That is a matter of balance and intonation, two inseparable entities. Often I had to lead ensembles from a player’s seat, in brass contexts most often from a tenor or bass part. I found out how my sound influenced the general level of playing by the other players, so I worked on this rich-in-thirds sound. These inherent overtone thirds tend flattish compared to equal temperament, but they draw the actually played thirds towards the more desirable Pythagorean thirds in major chords.

But then even I have had to realize the benefits of the fifth component. 10 years back I bought my Yeo signature mouthpiece during a holiday in Copenhagen. Right back at home a sad task came upon me. A band fellow and former student had died from a brain tumor, and the widow wanted Amazing Grace played when the casket was carried out of the church. The band was in hiatus for the summer and only a tuba player and I were known to be sure partakers. So I wrote an utterly modular arrangement, which would work from 2 players through full band. In the end the full band showed up, which revealed, that I had undermanned the melody line. Hence I had to work harder on the euph, than I had expected.

My very good YEP-641 “letting” me down surprised me. It could not be the new mouthpiece, which was clearly better than the previous Schilke 60. And then. I had not come to adapt the Yeo to hold my usual mouthpiece weight, circa 100 gram of bronze from a ship’s engine nut. I very soon made the adapting, which is only about a tiny bit of plastic garden hose acting as a fitting around the upper stem. Back was the full carrying core sound with fifths and thirds. My theory is that the added weight cancels out the fluff, the not very strong out-of-scale upper overtones. (I once discussed such weights with Steven Mead. He does not like heavy mouthpieces exactly because that cancelled fluff, which he finds takes the richness out of the true euphonium sound and makes it more of a baritone).

In a brass band I had to shift from my Besson 981 Eb to my York Master BBb as the lone BBb (medium sized rotary Cerveny) went to work in the Middle East. Already the 981 was a better contrabass than the Cerveny, but the York Master, often the only tuba at rehearsals, was very good for the overall band intonation. I liked the sound with a PT-50 (enlarged backbore) and the same weight as for the euph. Yet I wanted a bit more clarity in the outlining of the bass melody. At an outdoors concert I found it by bringing my Conn 40K. Also very warm and full, but with this little bit of extra core, which I ascribe to the very heavy brass common in American pre-WWII basses. Unfortunately even the best of sousaphones are looked down at by the uninformed, which only have heard blatting sousaphones.

Which takes us back to bloke, who several years back wrote a TubeNet posting about his finding, that the old US-made BAT tubas were nothing but the best sousaphone models being wrapped back in tuba shape.

Klaus Smedegaard Bjerre

[Art Hovey]

I have always been annoyed by the ways in which music educators try to use language to describe musical sounds, because I rarely have any idea of what they are talking about. "Talking about music is like dancing about chemical engineering."
Ask your teacher to demonstrate what "core sound" means.
Or else ask for recorded examples.

[sloan]

"Talking about music is like dancing about chemical engineering."

With all due respect: baloney.

Talking about music is like talking about chemical engineering. It isn't the same as actually doing it - but no one gets very good without it.

I think your complaint is that the people you don't understand are just very BAD at talking about music. I ignore as improbable the possibility that you are bad at listening...

See my earlier comment about whether you want Mickey Mantle or Billy Martin as your baseball coach.

Even if someone can demonstrate to you what "core" and "non-core" sounds like - if they can't explain it to you in words I submit that they don't really understand it. DOing and UNDERSTANDing are separate activities.

[rocksanddirt]

I don't disagree with sloan, but would posit that there are differnt types of understanding.

[sloan]

I had lesson like this a while ago where we were talking about using words to describe sound. My teacher said that words can evoke many different meanings and concepts in individuals; i.e dark may be a "good" word for someone but to someone else that could evoke the thought of muddy or flabby etc. So, usually if I have a question about something regarding tone or such I just have him show me, and I as a side note I learned more about "core" and "color" just listening to him play "row your boat" then any book. My favorite advice with a subject like this is "Play like Jake"

"good sound" is like pornography - I can't describe it, but I know it when I see it.

[TubaRay]

"good sound" is like pornography - I can't describe it, but I know it when I see it.

Let's see....Kenneth Sloan, Supreme Court...I seem to remember something about this. I can't quite remember....

[SplatterTone]

Lemme see if I understand this. Here is an edited snip of Hijazker Longa that Jared Ross posted a while back (pack rat that I am). Correct me if I am wrong, but my take on the discussion is that the snip starts out as moderately core-y gets real core-y at the end.
http://t-recs.net/mpegs/tubenet/jared_snip.mp3