tuben wrote:.... German tubas tend to produce an 'Ah or Eh' vowel. American tubas tend to produce an 'Oh or Oooou' vowel......
Glad you brought this up. I don't know if I can agree with your proposition.
But... what I would like to know is "do they still make 'German' and 'American' tubas?"
Also... what do the 'other' nationalities of tubas sound like? Asian... Indian... Brazilian... etc.
Dan Schultz
"The Village Tinker" http://www.thevillagetinker.com" target="_blank
Current 'stable'... Rudolf Meinl 5/4, Marzan (by Willson) euph, King 2341, Alphorn, and other strange stuff.
A traditional small flared smokestack bell rotary valved long leadpiped slow body tapered ' traditional German style' tuba will bring more 'core' into your sound and cute some 'fat'. This can be useful if you like to approach the tuba with a 'light' touch and your natural sound provides a lot of 'resonance' OR you are performing literature that requires you to partner your sound with a trombone section or act as an extension of a horn section.
In contrast, a wide flared short belled piston valved short leadpiped fast body tapered 'traditional American style' tuba will bring more 'resonance' and room filling presence into your sound. This can be useful if you like to approach the tuba more aggressively and your natural sound tends to have a lot of 'core' OR you are performing literature that requires you to partner with a string bass section or act as a super bass to a large ensemble.
Readily available examples of each style would be a Miraphone 186 vs a Besson 995.
Disclaimer:
I'm generalizing and reserve the right to adjust what I think over time.
A traditional small flared smokestack bell rotary valved long leadpiped slow body tapered ' traditional German style' tuba will bring more 'core' into your sound and cute some 'fat'. This can be useful if you like to approach the tuba with a 'light' touch and your natural sound provides a lot of 'resonance' OR you are performing literature that requires you to partner your sound with a trombone section or act as an extension of a horn section.
In contrast, a wide flared short belled piston valved short leadpiped fast body tapered 'traditional American style' tuba will bring more 'resonance' and room filling presence into your sound. This can be useful if you like to approach the tuba more aggressively and your natural sound tends to have a lot of 'core' OR you are performing literature that requires you to partner with a string bass section or act as a super bass to a large ensemble.
Readily available examples of each style would be a Miraphone 186 vs a Besson 995.
Disclaimer:
I'm generalizing and reserve the right to adjust what I think over time.
What about English? Personally, I think the Besson 995 is pretty German. I think that "American" horns also have a smaller bore (ex: King 2341, Kanstul 90).
I am quite convinced the OP has just about whatever imaginable acoustic measuring equipment making it possible to visualize sound components (which I don’t have). I agree about the thinking in vowels, which easily is equated to formant regions. As I understand these they are bands of frequencies, which are significantly louder than other components in a given complex instrumental sound.
From that point of view German tubas have pronounced formants, sometimes in low as well as in higher frequency ranges. American tubas have much less pronounced formants as they have a much more even loudness over their full overtone spectre.
British tubas fall in two groups: 19" bell or smaller bells. At least the 19" bell Besson 981 Eb tuba has a smooth sound very similar to American tubas, whereas the old 15" Eb 3+1 compers by principle have more pronounced formants, only they are in a (barking) frequency mid-range different from the German tubas’ generally higher or lower formants.
I'm not sure about my feeling for this topic now. I am currently trying out a new mouthpiece which has made my typical "American" tuba sound distinctly more "German". More core, more gutsy, less billowy, easier to center and harder to lip to pitch. Who would have thought a mouthpiece change could have made that much difference in overall sound. Maybe it's not all in the horn.
I am fortunate to have a great job that feeds my family well, but music feeds my soul.
The old English exponential profile tubas have some similarities to some Cerveny and to some Rudolf Meinl bell profiles.
With some of the US tuba bells that spread out in a quite shallow pancake, I would say they are reversed exponential. Not necessarily in a mathematical sense, but try looking at the bell profile turned 90°. The curve from the rim towards the throat has similarities to the curve from bell ferrule to bell rim on so-called exponential tubas.
Lewis, the horn maker from Chicago, once said that if the profile looked good, the horn would sound good. And looking good more or less equalled following mathematically correct curves.
With some Czech and Dutch/Belgian/French baritones the bell profile looks wrong. The throat is too fat and the small flare comes too abruptly. I hate these for their unfocused sound and horrible intonation. Sadly they were quite common here around 45 years ago.
With the sousaphones from the B&S/Weltklang brands (plus from some other non-American makers) the bell flare looks very shallow and there is a not beautifully curved transition into the bell knee. I doubt the design was dictated by ideal mathematical curves. Rather I suspect a lack in bell spinning technologies.
The point of thinking about bell shape is that it is not necessarily just the spectrum of overtones that makes the difference. It is also the propagation pattern.
When I lived in Austin and was commuting to San Antonio to hear the symphony, Mike Sanders was still playing his Alex. The hall was huge--it seats 3000. (The SA Symphony moved to the smaller Majestic Theater a few years later.) I've played on that stage--it sucks the sound right out of you.
My seats were near the back of the mezzanine, which meant I was a considerable distance from the stage.
Mike, when using his Alex, made a forbidding, commanding, powerful sound that raised goose bumps. But it was aurally clear that he was "way down there". The impression of a distant source has to do with the imaging. When I closed my eyes, I could point to Mike while he was playing. The direction whence the sound came to me was never in doubt, and that's because most of the sound was reaching me by the direct path.
Then, Mike bought his Yorkbrunner. The sound now had more color--it was richer. But the bigger difference was that it seemed to envelope me. When I closed my eyes, I could not point to Mike (except from memory)--the sound came at me from all directions. It didn't come from "down there". That's what people mean by "presence". Where the Alex had projection, the Hirsbrunner had presence.
That is mostly propagation, and the bell shape and (I'm convinced) throat size affect propagation significantly.
I think there is a spectral effect from this propagation. When the sound arrives at the listener more equally from all directions, it is being reflected to the listener from a range of surfaces. Each path is a different length, and that will introduce phase shifts that smooth out any raggedness in the waveform, even if just a bit. Putting some numbers to it, if the direct line of sight is 200 feet, and the path that bounces off the side wall of the auditorium is 220 feet, the sound will take 10% longer to reach the listener. With those numbers, that's about an additional 20 milliseconds. The phase shift even for a low note might be a whole wavelength between those two paths. That will definitely change the color--the phase shift will cause some frequencies to partially cancel out and others to be reinforced.
That is why Mike always described the appropriateness of each of these choices in terms of the performance space. Most recently, he has said that his Hirsbrunner is still most appropriate for Powell Hall in St. Louis.
And that's why the distinction between tall, directional bells and short, less-directional bells must be evaluated "out front".
Now, when I play my Holton alongside my Miraphone, the difference even in the near field is pretty profound. But that could possibly just be in comparing a really big tuba with a normal-sized tuba. The 6/4 Rudy Meinl is pretty darn broad and potentially woofy in the near field, too.
Rick "who likes the omnipresent effect in an auditorium" Denney
I know the general engineering approach has its fans. I am not one of them, as I am not sure it reflects musical perception.
If an instrument stands out clearly, then because of characteristic bands of formants. If we can located the instrument, then because we exactly from these characteristic formants know what to look for.
The directionality of brass sound is about its frequency contents, where the bands of louder frequencies are the formants. If a tuba (or a singer or an oboe) has distinct formants, it has carrying power. Some singers with not very loud voices still may carry through because of distinct formants not covered by other singers or instrumentalists.
If an Alexander contrabass sounds directional in a large hall, then because its sound is so characteristic that it could not come from any other instrument in the orchestra. If (a well played) American BAT sounds less directional, then not because parts of its frequency spectre has cancelled out itself, which would make it sound more like a German tuba (rather a bad German tuba than a good one). No the problem with the much more even frequency spectre of the US BAT is its richness, which contains sound elements from all of the lower strings. As there most often are quite a few lower strings on the stage, it is much harder to pinpoint the BAT sound within the tutti sound.
Does that make the US BAT a less desirable tuba for orchestral purposes. I would say on the contrary, as that sound is one of the really great unifying factors in the orchestral melting pot of sounds. Used for that purpose by the recording industry befor their equipment could pick up string bass sound efficiently.
