How do you judge "Projection"?

[pjv]

Rick, might the deference in sound you observed be what you (and others) have spoken about in the past? German-style tubas are more direct and US-style more encompassing?
Would one want to conclude that a German-style tuba projects beter then an US-style tuba of comparable size?
Very generally speaking of coarse.

[toobagrowl]

Would one want to conclude that a German-style tuba projects better then an US-style tuba of comparable size?
Very generally speaking of coarse.

I would have to say, "Yes, absolutely". Based on my experience as a player & listener over the years, the German-style tubas tend to project better. Something about the stovepipe bell & stack, larger-bore and rotary valves makes for a denser projecting sound.
The US-style is more diffuse, fluffy in sound. You could think of it like this: German-style = dense tree trunk; US-style = diffuse puffy cloud. Of course there are a lot of in-betweens and hybrids these days. Personally, I like to use my M-W rotary CC for larger ensembles, and my Holton Eb for quintet

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tommy Johnson and Jim Self in their Mirafone days:
Poltergeist (1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK8OqlvsbL4

There is a nice little tuba solo right after 5:30; the meaty parts soon after. THAT'S projection

[Rick Denney]

Rick,
I vote that clarity (your term: "penetration"...??) trumps inundation...at least somewhat.

The ultimate (obviously taken to a ridiculous extreme) in bass-sound "inundation" brings to mind (in my head) the sound of a bass guitar amplifier (amplifying a flat-wound-strings bass guitar) turned up to 9 (11...??) with the treble turned all the way down and the bass turned all the way up...with, perhaps, the brass instrument equivalent being someone blowing the crap out of a Rudy Meinl 6/4 (defacto 7/4) tuba with a Conn Chief mouthpiece stuck in the receiver.

Obviously, a tasteful (??) blend of both the I-factor and the P-factor makes a nice bass sound, when it is time for a bass sound to be powerful.

bloke "No...The 1995 sedan rolling down the street with two 2000W-driven subwoofers playing the same pitch over-and-over is NOT a good analogy for "inundation", because "inundation" does not involve the sound of thick car-trunk sheet cardboard rattling sympathetically (or rattling unsympathetically, for that matter).

Yes.

Now, take that bass sound you first described (my example would be my Holton with the supplied Revelation 52 mouthpiece--a woofmeister if there ever was one), and add to it the overtones and clarity provided by NOT turning the treble down, using round-wound strings, and using a big enough amp so that the inundation can occur without using up all the amp's headroom (maybe, at 5 instead of 11). I suspect we all want both inundation and penetration, and like you I don't really think it has to be one or the other. When we go with a Geibish cup on a BAT, we are trying to add penetration, right? When we go with a deep funnel on a 3/4 rotary tuba, we are trying to add inundation, right?

A great player with a super-efficient sound can achieve inundation with a small tuba, but they can achieve more of it with a big tuba. At what point do they think they've lost the penetration (clarity) they need? That's the balance we are all seeking. It's why you keep bringing big tubas into your fleet, even though you don't keep them. My example of listening to Mike during his transition from Alex to Yorkophone is a matter of emphasis--his Alex sound emphasized penetration on top of a floor of inundation, while his Yorkbrunner sound emphasized inundation with enough penetration to put it in the seat next to me while I was sitting on the back row of the mezzanine.

I am not a great player, and I do not have a particularly efficient sound, but I know when my buzz is really resonating, versus when it isn't. I can hear it and I can feel it. For most amateur tuba players, crossing that boundary is the first, biggest challenge, and many of us struggle with it our whole lives. Most of us go for penetration only, and succeed, forming habits that we then have to fight to replace basically forever.

Rick "thinking penetration without inundation gets the hand from the conductor" Denney

[Rick Denney]

It's easy to assess your projection if you have a friendly pair of ears you trust out in the audience. Or in the typical "elephant room" you can even have someone judge how well your sound carries across the room in spite of the interference.

I had used my little Yamaha F tuba, which had proven itself in a tuba quartet, when a bass tuba sound was appropriate in symphonic band. The conductor (a tuba player you all know) told me it wasn't getting out. So, I conducted exactly the experiment you described above, positioning my listening assistant (Ken Sloan) 20 or 30 feet out into the Elephant Room while I tried four or five different F tubas. The background noise wiped out anything that didn't project well. The clearest and cleanest sound he heard came from an old B&S Symphonie, while he could not hear the Yamaha at all. I've had a B&S with the Symphonie-style profile in the stable ever since.

And when I played my Hirsbrunner 193 for the first time, also in the Elephant Room, I could clearly hear the sound coming back at me from the ceiling. It lifted me out of my chair. I had always thought of Hirsbrunner rotary tubas as having a bit of a closed or tubby sound, but not that one! I had the same experience with my Holton, which I first played at Baltimore Brass, with a similarly tall ceiling and large-enough volume. One low Bb was all that one took to force the decision. In both cases, it was what came back after the note that I heard.

In my living room, I once demonstrated (for non-tuba players who were curious) the difference in sound between a bass tuba and a contrabass tuba. They could hear the difference clearly on notes above the bottom of the staff, but they could not hear any difference in notes below the staff. I suspect the long dimension of that room played a role in that outcome.

But I've never been able to hear anything like that while performing. At that point I have to relax and let the air do the work. In the auditoriums where we perform, I cannot usually hear anything--it's one reason our band (like most amateur groups) overblows in concert.

Rick "who performs in halls that swallow tuba sound" Denney

[toobagrowl]

Rick, not everybody wants that "6/4 York" sound, even though it has long been "in vogue". And yes, I've heard the top players on their 6/4 York-o-phones. Still prefer the German-style tubas for large ensembles. And the Yorkbrunner isn't "100% 'York'"; there is a lot of 'Kaisertuba' sound in it. Yup.

[Rick Denney]

Rick, might the deference in sound you observed be what you (and others) have spoken about in the past? German-style tubas are more direct and US-style more encompassing?
Would one want to conclude that a German-style tuba projects beter then an US-style tuba of comparable size?
Very generally speaking of coarse.

I think of that as a mid-sized effect. The player is the gross effect, the equipment is a gross effect but not as large a determinant as the player, and most of what we spend time arguing about (subtle variations of mouthpieces, alternate valve designs, damping or resonating contraptions, weights, etc.) as fine effects. And then there are non-effects, like silver versus lacquer, etc. I've learned that one cannot completely overcome a gross effect with a fine effect, but that finer effects are still effects, even within the gross effect context. So, the qualities of a tall rotary kaiser tuba versus a fat American-style tuba exist even when I play them, just as I notice the different between mouthpieces. But the size of the effect should dictate the importance we give it. If I were to guess at ranking their importance on a linear scale, it would be 1. Player, 6. Instrument, 57. All that other stuff, 37,477,574,773. Silver vs. Lacquer.

But we are who we are, and have to work within the context of our abilities. We make choices that get the closest we can get to that sound in our head, while we work to improve those abilities.

Rick "straying off topic" Denney

[Rick Denney]

Rick, not everybody wants that "6/4 York" sound, even though it has long been "in vogue". And yes, I've heard the top players on their 6/4 York-o-phones. Still prefer the German-style tubas for large ensembles. And the Yorkbrunner isn't "100% 'York'"; there is a lot of 'Kaisertuba' sound in it. Yup.

Everyone has a difference balance in their heads for any given situation, and that's what they pursue. I own a number of tubas, but only one of them is a Holton.

Rick "thinking the original handmade Yorkbrunners are a lot more York than Kaiser, though" Denney

[Donn]

Despite all the engineering competence here, this all still seems a little ambiguous.

Clarity: a property that apparently comes with overtones. That's OK as far as it goes, but anyone's tuba sound has lots of overtones. Could we be a little more specific - what overtones, in what balance, are we talking about? Does clarity depend on the ambient noise - i.e., is it about cutting through an ensemble, in which case it might actually depend on whether the dominant ensemble tonality is for example tympani or snare drums?

German sound: Small bell flare, am I right? At a sort of mechanical level of the acoustics, does this simply change the overtone balance? Or when we talk about direct vs. diffuse, do we mean rather literally, the small flare results in a more concentrated distribution of sound along the bell axis? Or something else?

Projection: "my sound was as smooth as butter and sounded as if I were right next to him", "he taught me to play so that each note was a ball of sound coming out of the bell of my tuba to be sent back to the balcony", "I look for a beautiful woman in the top balcony, and I play as if serenading her alone." Do we all agree that this effect boils down to overtones? Do we all agree that a small bell flare projects better?

Now, I totally get that if the question is "can you hear what the tuba player is up to", then the above all applies rather clearly. I just have the impression that some of us have something more specific in mind by "projection." Whether we can account for that thing with a simple physical explanation, or not ("difference between blue and red to a color blind man.")

[Rick Denney]

Despite all the engineering competence here, this all still seems a little ambiguous.

Clarity: a property that apparently comes with overtones. That's OK as far as it goes, but anyone's tuba sound has lots of overtones. Could we be a little more specific - what overtones, in what balance, are we talking about? Does clarity depend on the ambient noise - i.e., is it about cutting through an ensemble, in which case it might actually depend on whether the dominant ensemble tonality is for example tympani or snare drums?

German sound: Small bell flare, am I right? At a sort of mechanical level of the acoustics, does this simply change the overtone balance? Or when we talk about direct vs. diffuse, do we mean rather literally, the small flare results in a more concentrated distribution of sound along the bell axis? Or something else?

Projection: "my sound was as smooth as butter and sounded as if I were right next to him", "he taught me to play so that each note was a ball of sound coming out of the bell of my tuba to be sent back to the balcony", "I look for a beautiful woman in the top balcony, and I play as if serenading her alone." Do we all agree that this effect boils down to overtones? Do we all agree that a small bell flare projects better?

Now, I totally get that if the question is "can you hear what the tuba player is up to", then the above all applies rather clearly. I just have the impression that some of us have something more specific in mind by "projection." Whether we can account for that thing with a simple physical explanation, or not ("difference between blue and red to a color blind man.")

The verbal descriptions that Matt started with are aimed at the gross effect: The player. The player's buzz and airflow have a much bigger effect on projection than the instrument. Mike Sanders taught me to buzz a mouthpiece so that the air comes to a point a few inches past the mouthpiece. This was designed to alter my concept--a focused and directed buzz powered by lots of air--rather than achieve that actual shape of the airflow, however one might detect it. In fact, it's very difficult for us to shape the air, but we can learn that certain physical processes get certain results, and we use a range of conceptual tricks to naturally invoke those physical processes. But we will never develop those processes without a clear results goal, and that's what those verbal descriptions, added to listening experience, are designed to clarify. No, I cannot do anything physically to deliver a "ball of sound," but thinking about it as a ball of sound might trigger certain physical actions that give the desired result.

The notion of listening to the after ring is the player's validation of what the player is doing, but it also gives us feedback on what the instrument is doing. Similarly, a listening assistant in the hall is mostly about what the equipment is doing, given that the player is the constant in that evaluation.

But clarity isn't just about overtones, it's also about the attack and decay, and the propagation. Woofy sounds usually do not have a clean beginning, which is why they are called "woofy" and not "toofy". To me, a colorful sound has a wider array of properly tuned overtones versus a woofy sound. And a non-resonant sound--the word "spread" comes to mind--is when the overtones are not in tune and do not reinforce a single difference tone in the listener's ear. (Or, when the center of the note is not resonant with the length of the instrument.) That's what makes the pitch fuzzy, uncentered, and noisy. Noise is just untuned overtones.

I don't confuse propagation with spectrum, but they are interdependent to some extent, nor do I think directional propagation the sole (or even most important) contributor to projection. I do think the usual tall bell stack has a more directional propagation than a short bell stack. It may be the ratio of the bell stack that is flare versus straight taper. The shape of the bell (and the taper) absolutely affects the tuning of the overtones and therefore the color and resonance of the instrument. The bell is an impedance matching device, where impedance is frequency-dependent resistance, and is designed to reinforce useful frequencies and damp others. As to what shape has what effect, I'll leave that to the guys who have done the experimenting. Fletcher and Rossing have much to say on that topic, but not in the musical distinctions between particular fine differences in bell shapes on instruments that are already musical.

The shape of the bell (at least the top two feet of it) on my Holton and Hirsbrunner tubas are not that much different. They are both about the same diameter, both have a giant throat, and both have about the same shape in the curve of the flare. But the Hirsbrunner has another five or six inches of straight taper before it curves around the bottom bow, and there is probably a bit more general taper in that lower part of the bell stack. Is that what makes them different? It's probably part of it, but I doubt it's all of it.

So, we don't all agree one what has what effect, or even what "projection" means. I've seen, in this thread, equations with loudness, clarity, presence, penetration, intensity, tone and so on. Those all conjure subtly different concepts in my head, and probably all are part of it.

Boiling it down, we can't boil it down. But I think the wise musicians in this thread are warning against working at the margins, though marginal improvements are still improvements, and to focus on what's between the margins. If they boiled it down, they would probably take the tuba away from you, saying that what's left is the most important part.

Rick "not able to rehash mountains of old discussions" Denney

[Worth]

I know when my buzz is really resonating, versus when it isn't. I can hear it and I can feel it. For most amateur tuba players, crossing that boundary is the first, biggest challenge, and many of us struggle with it our whole lives.

A great distillation of a really interesting thread.

[Rick Denney]

Rick,

I can sneak my sound into a corporate sound, and sneak my sound back out (whether my idea, some music director's, a trombone neighbor's, or some composer's) and still do it with "clarity"...

(as it is very "clear" to that my intention is to cloak clearness)

...or not.

Yes, but from the first flap of the lips, your buzz is directed and at the right frequency, with enough air flow to support the buzz, even if the amplitude is very low. But a woofy attack is noisy and fuzzy--something like "phooo" instead of "oooo" for the sneak articulation or "tooo" for the tongued articulation. The ph in phooo, in my experience, is caused by the same buzz and air problems that cause the sound to spread and become noisy.

When it comes to the various ways of doing it wrong, I'm an expert with vast experience.

Rick "not equating clarity with loudness, but thinking a penetrating sound requires clarity, while a merely loud sound does not" Denney

[ken k]

I read in a recent post something I see posted many times.

Concerning the horn itself, maybe it was just the large room I was in but it seemed to me that the one I played didnt seem to project much.

Without using a sound pressure meter or getting feedback from others some distance from the actual tuba being played, how does a player know if a horn is "not projecting"? I've certainly heard a lot of different sounds come out of the same horn being tested in the store.

What makes you say one horn projects more than another when you can't be both playing it and at some point a good distance away to hear how well the horn projects?

Perhaps that person was actually thinking of the response of the horn. Some horns have a live bell that seems to vibrate in your hands as you play and others have a more solid feel. From behind the mouthpiece, close up, the live bell horn might make one think that it projects better, but perhaps out in a hall it may not?
k

[PaulMaybery]

This is a very interesting thread with some really informative responses.
My Dad played tuba, bass sax, and string bass back in the 30s up to the 70s. He had a little saying, that "the sound is going somewhere." If you can't hear it, very likely someone can. Not always true, but the jist of it was that being right under the bell or beside the bass really can not give you a good idea of where the sound is going. It may sound loud to you, but you may not be making the sound carry across a room. In line with Blokes recent post, a horn that you can feel vibrating is giving up much of its energy right in your own lap. It may feel gratifying to play, but how efficient is it. In the same context, heavy and light mouthpieces creat a similar phenomena. The heavies transmit more of the sound energy into the horn, the light wall mp allows much of those radial vibrations to escape. In the old days this was the basic difference betwen a King 26 and a Conn Helleberg. The former being heavy wall, the latter more skeletenized. Today, we even have very light titanium mps which seem to shimmer when they are played. Though at 400 bucks I have only heard this second hand. But again, my contention, this has to do with "PRESENCE OF SOUND" and not necessarily projection. I happen to have a CC BAT which has enormous presence. It does not project on its own, I need to fill it a certain way and push the sound out into the audience. If I don't the sound just lops over the music stand and annoys the trumpet players in front of me. But when I do push a 6/4 tuba that as Bloke mentioned is "built like a tank' it darn well projects without any problem. With a heavy wall Monet Prana 94 it can be devastating. With a lexan or delrin mp or even a stainless Helleberg, less so. But I can make up the difference with my chops. In that case it has to do with the efficiency of the equipment. Perhaps that is what we are trying to describe. I do believe certain equipment may be more efficient to work with. Size and design have much to do with it, as does metallurgy (anealed vs hardend brass. Thin vs heavy gauge. Bore size and the degree of compression left in the valves (worn out or new) So many variables.

[ken k]

yup. Thinwall brass instruments are gratifying to play in a tactile way, because a player can feel them vibrate in their hands...but the vibration of a brass instrument's body probably doesn't have a whole lot to do with how much the sound makes it from the instrument to far corners of an auditorium.
I used to think it did...until I owned a couple of built-like-a-tank tubas that physically vibrate very little, yet are very ( ) projective.

a little Besson Eb perhaps?

[Rick Denney]

wasn't thinking of that...but (sure) yes...but (also wasn't thinking of this one either) even more so: a butt-ugly bell-front Besson BBb - absolutely thunderous

You were thinking of a Willson 3050.

Rick "so was I" Denney

[MrTubaChris]

Thank you for asking that wonderful question! I really enjoyed everyone's response. Thanks for the wisdom.

[roweenie]

I remember an audition that I decided to take (again, for all the wrong reasons per usual: [1] "provided medical insurance", [2] "decent pay", and [3] "close to relatives in a no-income-tax state"...

Seems like 3 pretty damn good reasons, to me....