Posted by Rick Denney on September 04, 2001 at 13:18:04:
In Reply to: Re: Re: CC 2 feet shorter??? posted by except on September 02, 2001 at 12:20:44:
In which case they are not on the same partial, as has already been described in the other part of this thread. A CC on a BBb tuba is played on the second partial of the open bugle plus most of the valve tubing. A CC on a CC tuba is played on the first partial with no valve tubing. But drop another whole step to the Bb, and both are playing that note with the same length (18 feet) and both are on the same partial (the first). And that "pedal" BBb is on the open bugle on the BBb tuba and uses the first valve on the CC tuba.
And go up a semitone to the C#, and again both use the same length of tubing. Both are played on the second partial but again with a higher percentage of valve tubing on the CC.
For any two instruments of slightly differing pitch, you can find notes that are shorter on the shorter instrument, because on those notes it can play a lower partial with less valve tubing. But ALL the notes that are on the same partial are played with a smaller percentage of valve tubing on the longer instrument.
This says nothing about the quality of the result, by the way. Even if there was a qualitative difference connected with percentage of valve tubing or length of tubing with a given instruement, you'd have some notes that are better and some that are worse on any given pair of differently pitched instruments.
Rick "thinking we'd already covered this ground" Denney