Baritones

[Chadtuba]

What can any of you tell me about playing a true baritone and what to look for if I were to purchase one? I was invited to play baritone instead of tuba or euphonium with my summer brass band but I may not be able to get my hands on a baritone until I get there in late June. I'm looking into the possibility of purchasing one either used or one of the "clones" from somewhere if I can convince the wife to let me spend the money. I'm looking at the Dillon 3+1 or the Schiller 3 valved compensating from Jim Laabs.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Thanks for any laughter you can give as well

[PMeuph]

Baritone parts in brass band are interesting but usually pale in comparison to Euphonium parts. 1st baritone usually plays a lot of counter-melodies with tenor horn and flugel. Since a brass band is so well "furnished" on the bottom end, with 4 tubas and 3 trombones, the baritones usually tend to play higher stuff. AS such, a 4th valve would more for tuning issues than for register.

Personally, I really like the three valve comp euphoniums. I have not tried three valve comp baritones but I would imagine they are similar. If I were you, I'd try to drive to Jim laabs and try the 3 valve they have there. Seems reasonably priced, imho.

Baritones, are hard beasts to get used to after you've played large bore horns. A smaller mouthpiece, (12c, schilke 47, Wick 6, etc) might help not get a wide, diffuse tone.

[druby]

I play euph (for 51 years) and have played 1st baritone for the last 4 years. The baritone parts (particularly the 1st baritone) are generally higher, and often are in section with the Eb horns. In the brass band, the fluegel horn is usually the high voice in the horn section, but it sometimes trades off with repiano in the cornets. There are three Eb tenor horn parts (solo, 1st and 2nd) and two baritones (1st, 2nd). The baritone has three roles in the band. It functions as lower voices in the horn section, it doubles euphonium (usually on faster technical bits for punctuation), or it sometimes doubles trombones to add "fullness". On rare occasions,. the baritone has its own solo parts as well.

These horns play VERY differently from euphonium. They tend to be harder to play in tune since the horns don't have the same resonance and "center" as euphonium. Also, you generally want to use a bit of a smaller mouthpiece on baritone to keep pitch under control in the high range.

Three valve compensating baritones are fine. I play a 4 valve York (3056) which is the same as an old Besson 956. Generally, I prefer the 3 valve to the 4 valve horns. The new Besson 2056 Prestige 4 valve is a beautiful horn for major $$$'s. If you try a Jim Laabs horn, make sure to bring a tuner with you and a small shank mouthpiece (a Wick 6BS or Bach 6.5AL are fine).

Doug

[hald]

I tried sending this via pm and board email, but couldn't get it to work. So, I hope my message reaches you. I have a Schiller 3 valve compensating British style baritone I'd like to sell. I bought it about a year ago, mainly out of curiosity, to compare with euphonium and American style baritones. It's in virtually new condition. I can send photos. Offer? I hadn't thought of posting this for sale, then I saw your post. It would come with case and accessories , no mouthpiece ( I like using the mouthpiece on a Besson euph I own). Email if interested. Thanks in advance

[imperialbari]

http://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical- ... mode=model

[Chadtuba]

Thanks for the information so far; this has been a very informative read. Anybody else have anything productive . . . or otherwise to add to the conversation?

And hald, I sent you a PM, hopefully you got it.

[Carroll]

I can echo the difference in baritone and euphonium playing. While I have played euph for 30 years and baritone for 5, it is a very different head thing. Baritone parts must be lighter and more compact. The parts are generally higher in tessitura and less dense - notewise.

I play a Yamaha 301 with a Wick Heritage 7C. I really like the combination and have good control of dynamic, intonation, and color. By the way...this horn has paid for itself numerous times in the last five years.

[bbocaner]

The Yamaha baritones are smaller-belled and smaller-bored than is the fashion these days. If you wanted a less expensive 3-valve non-compensating, I would go for the Besson 757 or 1057 rather than the YBH-301 or YBH-621. Yamaha is apparently working on a new 3-valve compensating Baritone for their neo range which is more inline with what the predominant sound is these days, but noone knows when it'll be out.

You're also getting some bad advice regarding mouthpieces here. The standard mouthpiece for baritones forever has been the wick 6BS which is pretty similar to a bach 6.5al, perhaps a little bit deeper. I wouldn't go any smaller unless your natural tendancy is towards an extremely dark sound. For brass band, you really want a darker sound, though. If you listen to all the best British players, that's what they're getting. Most people these days are using something deeper and more funnel-like like a SM6 or SM5 or the alliance baritone 6 or baritone 5. Bach 5G or 5GS wouldn't be awful, although I feel a more funnel-shaped mouthpiece helps give you the lightness you'd want as a compliment to the darker sound. A small-stem Schilke 51D is not all that dissimilar to a SM5.

I wrote a post recently on the dwerden.com forums that went through all the available instruments. http://www.dwerden.com/talk/forum/messa ... erthread=y" target="_blank

[J.c. Sherman]

I'm pretty sure (??) that Yamaha only makes a non-comp 3-valve, but it plays like a dream. Any mpc. bigger than 6-1/2AL is probably a misfit. (I'd gravitate more towards the 12C size range.)

I agree with bloke completely. I love my Yamaha, and find it to be a terrific quintet horn as well.

BUT, I am getting a growing distaste for the changing sound of the baritones lately. They are less bass cornets, and it sounds like people are trying to take their distinctive brilliance away and make them sound like euphoniums. I use the stock mouthpiece on my Yamaha, a 12C clone. It's a delight and the pitch is good. I may add a slide trigger for B and E someday, but I'm not particularly motivated - everything is lip-able.

I have the 300 series… it was an incredible bargain, useful for tuba quartets (got the idea from Earl Louder), Brass quintet (Ewald rocks with it!), Holst 1st Suite, and solo literature (particularly cornet solos, which are very well suited to it).

[bbocaner]

JC, If you listen to recordings from Black Dyke, Cory, Grimethorpe, etc.. from the last 20 or so years, the baritone sound is very dark. It isn't a particularly recent development. You're really looking for a euphonium-like sound, just lighter, but not necessarily brighter. The cornets are extremely dark sounding as well, so it's not like they are getting away from the "bass cornet" concept you describe. You really can't get there with the YBH-301 or YBH-621, especially not with a small mouthpiece. If you are using a baritone for brass bands, and especially brass band contests, in which judges are looking for a particular sound; then you really need to follow the example that the premier British bands are laying down.

Now for your uses, in which you are using it for a brighter voice in a tuba quartet, or within a brass quintet fulfilling the trombone role, I'd have no problem with the Yamaha which is a solid instrument, but it just doesn't blend with the cornets, Eb tenorhorns, etc. in the modern british-style brass band.

[Carroll]

Okay... I will re-think my concept of a baritone sound and try to come better in line with fashion of the day. Won't the guys in my band be pleased when I do...

[bbocaner]

Okay... I will re-think my concept of a baritone sound and try to come better in line with fashion of the day. Won't the guys in my band be pleased when I do...

no need to get snippy... but put it this way:

If you were to be invited to play tenor trombone with an orchestra, you'd be expected to show up with something resembling a conn 88h or a bach 42b -- .547 bore, 8.5" bell. You've got a little leeway either way, perhaps use a tenor bell with a bass slide, or something with a 9" bell, maybe dual bore, or something like a bach 32 (8" bell, .525 bore). Unless it's a very casual community orchestra or something, you wouldn't show up with your .509" bore king 3b. And if you did, you certainly wouldn't want to be using a 12c mouthpiece. Now you could make the argument that it works for certain literature, etc.. and that's fine, but in general you'd be expected to make the kind of sounds that are easiest to make with a large bore tenor trombone. Doesn't matter that in certain countries in the 1950s all the orchestral players would have been using .500 (or smaller) trombones. It's just not the sound that's fashionable these days.

If you show up at a serious brass band today to play baritone, the conductor and the rest of the band is going to expect you to make a dark sound. I made the same mistake of using a bach 7c mouthpiece when I first started playing baritone, rationalizing that I wanted a sound that was much brighter than the euphonium sound -- but I was told by conductors that it was too bright. If your band is playing at contests, the judges are going to expect you to make that dark sound. The current yamaha baritones are on the periphery of being able to achieve that sound. Yamaha knows it -- they know they don't sell well at all in Great Britain (even though yamaha cornets, euphoniums, tubas, tenorhorns are VERY popular there), and they are working on a new model (perhaps multiple new models?) that fit in better, probably to replace their existing models. Let's call it the equivalent of that .509" bore trombone. You can probably get a sound that's pretty close, especially if you are using a larger mouthpiece with it -- but if you're using something in the 7 to 12 range (unless your embouchure is such that your sound is at the extreme end of dark naturally) you're just not going to do that. If this is a casual group, it's probably fine -- there are probably bigger fish to fry with the other sections, or intonation, or whatever. If you went back to the 1950s with one you'd probably make an appropriate sound (although you wouldn't be in tune as brass bands were still tuning at a=455 until 1966).

Now if you're using it for a non-brass band setting, for a tuba quartet as JC suggests, or for jazz, or as a tenor voice instrument to play along with hymns at your church -- by all means, the yamaha is an excellent baritone.

AAAND to get back to the original poster's question... the schiller 3-valve compensating being a besson 955 copy would probably be a better bet than the dillon non-comp 3+1 which I assume is a yamaha ybh-621 copy.

You might also look into the John Packer/Sterling chinese-sourced 3-valve compensating instrument.

[Carroll]

I was not intentionally "snippy"... I guess that is one of the difficulties of inflectionless media. I will seriously reconsider my concept of baritone sound. I appreciate your expertise and correction. I, too, do not wish to argue. I will not give advice on the subject again.

[bbocaner]

The larger-and-larger wind instruments are built, the more mezzo-schmezzo-blah (particularly wind bands and brass bands) ensembles tend to sound, and the less variety will be found in the sonority from one family of instruments to the next.

Well, that's a good thought, but if you listen to any of the most recent "serious music" recording releases from bands like cory or dyke you'd be hard pressed to argue that the sounds they were making didn't have more variety of timbre and textures than ever before in the history of brass band music. It's really amazing and I consider the new music for brass bands to be the absolute state of the art in brass playing, and that those players in the top british-style bands could give ANY of the top orchestral players a run for their money! However, as druby pointed out earlier in the thread, the baritone is called on to be a real chameleon in the band, and most of the brightness can come from the trombone section and the soprano cornet. There are only so many shades of brass instrument timbre in the tenor/baritone range that can be expressed before it all just starts muddling together!

[bbocaner]

I was not intentionally "snippy"... I guess that is one of the difficulties of inflectionless media. I will seriously reconsider my concept of baritone sound. I appreciate your expertise and correction. I, too, do not wish to argue. I will not give advice on the subject again.

I don't like arguing either! And don't stop contributing to threads about the baritone! There are only so many of us in the USA that actually play this instrument, and fewer still that really like it! I'm a big booster of the instrument and I absolutely adore it, and I love that it's starting to get more attention. You're just doing the same thing as we all are, sharing experience and what works... That's how we all learn. For all I know one of our UK friends will pipe in and put me in my place on the topic!

[Chadtuba]

Please don't stop posting folks. This has all been a wonderful learning experience and I'd really like to hear what else there is to say about playing a real baritone. I'm excited about the opportunity to play in the baritone section this summer. I love my tuba, really love my euphonium, and am looking forward to loving the baritone as well.

The next task for me is to convince the wife that I "need" one At this point, I'm hoping that the deal can be made with hald for his used baritone.

[aqualung]

The big prob with the 3V comp baritones is that about a dozen and a half other Bb instruments in the BB don't have a compensated 2-3.
Pitches that could benefit from a 4th valve are extremely rare in the usual BB literature for 1st & 2nd Bari.

[J.c. Sherman]

I only had a couple years in brass band; it wasn't cost effective, but it was very educational.

This'll sound snarky, but it's not; it would seem through your baritone summary, bbocaner, that the trombones are also headed to a more "uniform" and "euphonium" sound. They too used to be a distinct and smaller bore timbre.

I do listen to brass bands from time to time. And I speak as a listener and not an adjudicator, of course - I like to hear different timbres than the ones which seem to be growing. That I can no longer identify one of my favorite and under-utilized instruments is something I don't like. The OP should obviously consider the prevailing trends and of course - if valuable to them - the adjudication of modern baritones. However, it doesn’t mean I can’t wish to hear their distinctive voice (to say nothing of Mahler 7!).

J.c.S. (who thinks the Euphs are getting too damn big too, and loves soloing on his Bach 36 ; )

[J.c. Sherman]

sidebar: (but relating to mezzo-schmezzo)

The "standard" trombone now, for high school bands is the .547" and 8-1/2" bell instrument (F-attachment, of course...but only for playing that D-scale at All-State auditions, etc.)

Here's the thing:

Those trombones (even though - since the 70's - they have been manufactured in absolutely LEGION numbers) are SPECIALTY trombones. Moreover, they are designed for one or two guys in a large symphony orchestra to be able to play VERY loud withOUT sounding VERY bright.

When you have a row of SEVEN (etc.) 10th-11th-12th graders playing these things in a 90 -100 pc. concert band, neither the band director (nor the music) will EVER call on these kids to push those instruments to the limit. Thus (particularly when a whole bunch of these kids are encouraged to play huge mouthpieces, such as 5GS, 51, etc.) the trombone sections in high school bands end up sounding like seven more baritone horns (except not quite as close to in-tune as the baritones).

IMO, most high school band trombone players should play nothing larger than a .525" bore/8-1/2" bell trombone (with a c. .510" bore/8" bell instrument seeming the most appropriate for high school band use)...

...and yes, the giant-bore/12" bell euphoniums not only begin to lose the characteristic sound, but (as we've seen) become so difficult to steer that a main tuning slide trigger has become oem.

bloke "love me or hate me"

+1

[bbocaner]

This'll sound snarky, but it's not; it would seem through your baritone summary, bbocaner, that the trombones are also headed to a more "uniform" and "euphonium" sound. They too used to be a distinct and smaller bore timbre.

I don't disagree regarding trombones -- I'm a big believer in using smaller bore instruments for certain literature, or I'd love to have some small-bore but large-bell german 19th century style trombones. I've played orchestra gigs on "sackbut" for mozart and on antique rotary valve trombones for dvorak. And there used to be national differences, too -- french orchestras used small instruments, british orchestras had the g bass and small tenors and the Eb tuba (and later were pretty much all conn trombones), german and austrian orchestras had the german trombones with a very colorful sound. You used to be able to listen to a recording and figure out who was playing just by the sound of the brass.

But if, as an orchestral player or even a generalist "legit" player, you only own one trombone, or if you haven't worked it out with the rest of the section yet...

Re: high school trombonists: yeah, the vast majority of them would be better off with medium bore trombones. And you can get pretty darn close to a .547 sound with a .525 and the right leadpipe and mouthpiece. But for the really serious students; the ones who are going to be winning auditions for their local youth orchestras, the ones who want to go audition at juilliard, the ones who are doing national competitions, etc.. it's going to be a limitation. Your mahler 3 or ride excerpts just aren't going to be on a level plane with the other candidates that DO have large bore trombones.

to be growing. That I can no longer identify one of my favorite and under-utilized instruments is something I don't like. The OP should obviously consider the prevailing trends and of course - if valuable to them - the adjudication of modern baritones. However, it doesn’t mean I can’t wish to hear their distinctive voice

True. But going all the way back to vaughan williams or even all the way back to 19th century arrangements, the baritone is not supposed to stick out. It's a supportive role.

(to say nothing of Mahler 7!).

well, mahler 7 was intended for the german style tenorhorn which (even in the early 1900s) was a larger bore and larger-belled instrument than the british-style baritone horn, still is. So I think you should be headed the opposite direction for mahler 7, not towards a smaller instrument.