Shockwave wrote:Have you ever noticed that one good bass singer can balance an entire choir? One good tuba can similarly put the bottom on an entire orchestra or band
Sounds to me more like it's an arguement for having one good tuba in every orchestra or band...MikeMason wrote:isn't this an argument for a large,heavy gauge,BBb tuba?
Actually, no. I've found that horns made of thin brass and even fiberglass make more bass than heavy instruments. I have two Eb tubas that are the same size and the same bore. One is an ancient 8lb saxhorn, the other is an incredibly heavy Besson probably made from WW1 surplus artillery shells. The saxhorn makes a LOT more bass, as much as my full size BBb tuba down to Bb.MikeMason wrote:isn't this an argument for a large,heavy gauge,BBb tuba?(preferably with monsterweight valve caps and a megatone mp
If you blow a tuba that hard it doesn't increase the bass, it just produces an obnoxious blat. That's what bass trombones are for.Chuck(G) wrote:Speakers are remarkably insensitive to low pitches too. There are very, very few speakers that can output a C three octaves below the staff without a serious (extreme) reduction in volume. I have one designed to call wild elephants in Africa that reaches down to 14Hz, and tones that low are quite noticeable. Most speakers, particularly bass reflex, can show a lot of cone motion when they are making no sound at all.I used to keep a midi file of a more-or-less pure sinewave that started at C below the staff and descended about 2 octaves. At the lower octave the situation obtains that even with the volume all the way up, you can see the speaker cones moving, but can't hear a thing. The ear is remarkably insensitive to very low pitches.
A pedal C may have no fundamental, but it has strong output at C below the staff and G at the bottom of the staff. Chances are those pitches are still below the rest of the ensemble and can easily come through with little competition. The double bass doesnt need to be gigantic and produce a tremendous amount of bass because instruments are scaled like singers, not like model trains. People built double basses to sound like bass voices, and violins to sound like high sopranos.What the ear does very well, however, is to infer a fundamental pitch from its harmonic structure. You may be proud as punch that you can really punch out a "pedal" C0, but the fact is that there's almost no fundamental there. Similarly, with the double-bass, there's very little fundamental on the low notes (one problem is that it isn't built to scale with the violin), but it has a large harmonic content.
The harmonic content will be there no matter what, but it is the sound that the bass singer supplies below the other singers that adds to the whole. Otherwise one could croak into a megaphone and do the same job.The example of the bass singer lies not so much in his fundamental pitch, but rather the strength of harmonic content of the fundamental that he brings to the party.
I understand your reasoning, but in practice it works out almost the opposite. Higher frequencies are absorbed by the air, people, purses, seats, curtains, hairdos, coats, carpet and everything else in that hall more than low frequencies. High frequency waves are also short and tend to scatter off of objects in the hall while 20 or 30 foot bass waves reflect intact. The sum of all this is that bass carries in the concert hall, or even outdoors, better than treble.In any case, a much larger problem, particularly in the case of live music, is that low frequencies need to be much louder to be heard as the distance from the source increases. What may be a really convincing gut-rumble by the tuba to the bass trombonist sitting next to him will be all but inaudible to someone sitting in the back of the hall. The reason for this becomes very apparent if one goes back to the loudness-vs-frequency chart. As sounds get softer, the lower frequencies must become proportionately louder than the remainder of the ensemble simply to stay balanced. But this means that for someone sitting in the first row or for the guy waving the stick, the tuba may sound overpowering.
Fortunately, much of the fundamental of the tuba is filled in by the ear hearing the upper harmonic content, so the poor tuba player is saved from a ruptured aneurysm in his attempts to reach the cheap seats with his sound.
To me, this says that from a strictly musical standpoint, we ought to concentrate on the harmonics of our low notes rather than the fundamental.
I'm very skeptical that a human being can hear a musical tone at 14 Hz. Perhaps a pressure wave can be sensed or some harmonic content deduced, but a musical tone?Shockwave wrote: Speakers are remarkably insensitive to low pitches too. There are very, very few speakers that can output a C three octaves below the staff without a serious (extreme) reduction in volume. I have one designed to call wild elephants in Africa that reaches down to 14Hz, and tones that low are quite noticeable. Most speakers, particularly bass reflex, can show a lot of cone motion when they are making no sound at all.
Precisely--thank you for reiterating my point. Tubas are best heard from their harmonic--not their fundamental content.A pedal C may have no fundamental, but it has strong output at C below the staff and G at the bottom of the staff. Chances are those pitches are still below the rest of the ensemble and can easily come through with little competition. The double bass doesnt need to be gigantic and produce a tremendous amount of bass because instruments are scaled like singers, not like model trains. People built double basses to sound like bass voices, and violins to sound like high sopranos.
...and it's the harmonics of that bass voice that make him noticeable, not its weak fundamental.The harmonic content will be there no matter what, but it is the sound that the bass singer supplies below the other singers that adds to the whole. Otherwise one could croak into a megaphone and do the same job.
While high firequencies are indeed attenuated more by porous surfaces than low, go back and take a look at the loudness curves I posted earlier. Note that they're extremely non-linear at the low end--that the low frequencies have to be boosted as the overall midrange volume gets quieter. That's why there are "loudness" controls on stereo equipment in attempt to compensate for the nonlinearity of the Fletcher-Munson curve.I understand your reasoning, but in practice it works out almost the opposite. Higher frequencies are absorbed by the air, people, purses, seats, curtains, hairdos, coats, carpet and everything else in that hall more than low frequencies. High frequency waves are also short and tend to scatter off of objects in the hall while 20 or 30 foot bass waves reflect intact. The sum of all this is that bass carries in the concert hall, or even outdoors, better than treble.
I said nothing about blowing a tuba to distortion. What I did say was that harmonic content was perhaps more important than fundamental. This can be achieved with a change in mouthpiece or construction of the instrument.If you blow a tuba that hard it doesn't increase the bass, it just produces an obnoxious blat. That's what bass trombones are for.
I beg to differ and offer a concrete example Organ builders have been building instruments with "resultant" stops for centuries, being fully aware of this effect. Many organs with stops marked as 32' really create the effect by combining a 16' voice and 10 2/3' quint. Here's an example at random:The ear does not infer the existence of fundamental from harmonics. If there isnt any, you won't hear any. The ear more closely responds to the repetition rate of a wave, and that has nothing to do with whether there is fundamental or not.
I don't want to dive into the exotic part of the discussion; but I'd thought I'd share the results of an experiment I did a long time ago when I sold HiFi (back when it was cool) at the now defunct (as far as I know) Team Electronics. I had a Micro Moog at the time. The filter section could be put into self oscillation to produce a sine wave that you could dial down to as low a frequency as you wanted -- to 1 Hz or less. I ran it through a Bose 2 X 250 watt into 8 ohm amplifier (technically, a 2 x 45 volt amplifier) and tested various speakers. At very low frequencies, we could hear nothing more than maybe a rustling sound from the speakers. However, one could clearly hear the building rattling to the extent that the manager of the Pottery Plus store next door called us and told us to knock it off. So, while the ear might say the output of the speaker was very low, the building and dishes next door told a different story.Speakers are remarkably insensitive to low pitches too. There are very, very few speakers that can output a C three octaves below the staff without a serious (extreme) reduction in volume.
I think this statement says a lot more about your subjective response than the characteristic of the sound.Doc wrote:I've heard Dave Kirk play his Alex for years. Dave has an amazingly warm, rich, colorful sound on the Alex. One of the best tuba sounds out there in an orchestra, bar none. Then I heard him play his Nirschl. Dave still kicks ***, but I don't like that sound as much.
You said you couldn't hear anything from your speaker, and I told you why. It has nothing to do with music. Human hearing goes down to 3Hz if the level is high enough (with military battlefield sound simulators). The only pitch perception I have below 20Hz is intonation with notes in octaves.Chuck(G) wrote: I'm very skeptical that a human being can hear a musical tone at 14 Hz. Perhaps a pressure wave can be sensed or some harmonic content deduced, but a musical tone?
My point was that even weak sounds can reach an audience if they are steady tones without much competition from other sounds. Your opinion and mine coincide for pedal tones but diverge for higher notes where I think that the fundamental has the best chance of reaching the audience and you think the upper harmonics have the best chance of reaching the audience.Precisely--thank you for reiterating my point. Tubas are best heard from their harmonic--not their fundamental content.
I'd like to hear a tuba scaled from a piccolo trumpet, with a 3.3" bore, 32" bell, and a mouthpiece with a 2.6" cup diameter and .55" throat.Actually, full-scalle basses have been constructed (even recently). Berlioz was in love with the darned thing; the major problem being that it wasn't playable with any facility (note the levers):
His sounds that don't compete with other sounds make him noticeable....and it's the harmonics of that bass voice that make him noticeable, not its weak fundamental.
Those curves are great for predicting hearing damage in the workplace or the difference in tone when speakers are turned way down to a low level, but nearly useless for what you're talking about. You are talking about a level reduction due to distance that would make the bass seem lacking. It just does not work that way, other factors dominate and at a distance the bass level increases compared to the rest of the music. That's why elephants and whales use low frequency tones to signal over long distances and why a jet plane rumbles at a distance and roars up close. Low frequencies carry better.While high firequencies are indeed attenuated more by porous surfaces than low, go back and take a look at the loudness curves I posted earlier. Note that they're extremely non-linear at the low end--that the low frequencies have to be boosted as the overall midrange volume gets quieter. That's why there are "loudness" controls on stereo equipment in attempt to compensate for the nonlinearity of the Fletcher-Munson curve.
Consider the implication that if the level of bass is perfect to the conductor's ears, it's going to be downright tinny at the back of the hall, where the volume is much lower.
Having multiple bass instruments out of tune and out of phase does not increase the bass output much either physically or perceptively. The harmonic output increases, but is absorbed more with distance so you end up with not much more sound than one tuba makes. I've noticed at tuba christmas that there is subjectively as much bass when a quartet is playing as when the entire ensemble of 300 is playing.Or, as anyone listening to a marching band from the top row of the bleachers can attest--"what sousaphones?".
This is a matter of human physiology--as sounds get softer, the bass goes away.
You said a player would give himself an aneurism blowing hard enough to send sound to the back of the hall, which means to me blowing really really hard on the tuba. If you put enough air pressure into a tuba to make your head swell, it is going to blat.I said nothing about blowing a tuba to distortion. What I did say was that harmonic content was perhaps more important than fundamental. This can be achieved with a change in mouthpiece or construction of the instrument.
It's not strange at all. Any sum of harmonic multiples of a fundamental frequency produces a wave that repeats at that fundamental frequency even if there is no sound content at the fundamental. The ear senses pitch from the repetition rate, which you can call the fundamental frequency, but don't confuse that with energy content at the fundamental frequency which is usually called simply "fundamental". The repetition rate will stay the same as long as at least 2 harmonics are present. The ear does not conjure into existence fundamental when it isn't there, but it does detect the repetition rate.I beg to differ and offer a concrete example Organ builders have been building instruments with "resultant" stops for centuries, being fully aware of this effect. Many organs with stops marked as 32' really create the effect by combining a 16' voice and 10 2/3' quint. Here's an example at random:
Does anyone suppose that the tuba player honking out his pedal C is producing a fundamental tone at an audible level? Yet the ear perceives a note lower than the C an octave above. From what?
The ear is a very strange thing.
Which is precisely my point!It's not strange at all. Any sum of harmonic multiples of a fundamental frequency produces a wave that repeats at that fundamental frequency even if there is no sound content at the fundamental.
Anyone who's done arrangements for tuba choir will tell you that chords sound muddy far higher than that because the heterodynes begin to drop below that 20 Hz. But that has nothing to do with my point.Chords start to sound muddy when the fundamental frequency from which they are built drops below about 20Hz, which not by coincidence is the lower limit of pitch recognition.
So, to get mind-numblingly elephant-in-heat type of bass in the upper gallery seats of a stadium, all we need to do is ditch all but one sousaphone and the bass will sound proprtionally louder with respect to the rest of the band than it would if I were 3 feet away from the player, right? After all, you've said that bass frequencies aren't attenuated as much as higher frequencies by distance. Wonder why the collegiate marching bands haven't stumbled upon that nugget of truth?Having multiple bass instruments out of tune and out of phase does not increase the bass output much either physically or perceptively.
I respectfully submit that you need to attend more live concerts and sit in the cheap seats. The experience will be a revelation.You are talking about a level reduction due to distance that would make the bass seem lacking. It just does not work that way.
I said that the aforementioned player would rupture an aneurysm; I'm not aware that one can "give himself an aneurysm" by playing a tuba or any other instrument--they're a defect in the vascular system and can occur anywhere in the body, not just the head. Fragile aneurysms can be ruptured with nothing more than the mild hypertension resulting from the frustration with another's ridiculous.....You said a player would give himself an aneurism blowing hard enough to send sound to the back of the hall, which means to me blowing really really hard on the tuba. If you put enough air pressure into a tuba to make your head swell, it is going to blat.
'cause otherwise, they couldn't spell out the name of the school!Chuck(G) wrote:......all we need to do is ditch all but one sousaphone and the bass will sound proprtionally louder with respect to the rest of the band than it would if I were 3 feet away from the player, right? After all, you've said that bass frequencies aren't attenuated as much as higher frequencies by distance. Wonder why the collegiate marching bands haven't stumbled upon that nugget of truth?
I think that that you may be confusing the harmonic series that a brass player exploits, in order to select various tones on their instrument, and the overtones that are generated when a note (on any instrument) is sounded. They are really two completely different phenomena.Donn wrote:.......Isn't it true that when I play for example a C two lines below the bass staff, the frequencies that comprise that tone are determined not exactly by the pitch itself, but by my instrument. On my F helicon, it would be C/G/C/E/G/..., on my BBb sousaphone C/F/A/C/F...?
(Note recent comments in another thread, about the effect of Eb and BBb tubas playing together, related to this principle.)
So if you buy this, then I think it follows that if on my F tuba I play this C/G/C/E/G, and then jump up to G (G/C/E/G), you continue to hear the same harmonics, and only the relative strength has changed - the two-line C went to 0, and the ones above it increased in volume.....
How could they be? The overtones are generated by the instrument, they aren't some intrinsic property of the fundamental. To take your example, the clarinet's overtones are distinctive because there's very little of the even partials. The clarinet's second register is, not coincidentally, also distinctive for the player, because it comes out a fifth higher than it would on the flute - the flute's octave is the 2nd partial, so the clarinet instead jumps to the 3rd.Z-Tuba Dude wrote: I think that that you may be confusing the harmonic series that a brass player exploits, in order to select various tones on their instrument, and the overtones that are generated when a note (on any instrument) is sounded. They are really two completely different phenomena.
