Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Eb-Tuba Willson vs. Besson Sovereign


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Posted by dp 4 both jb and dr. y on December 26, 2001 at 22:58:11:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Eb-Tuba Willson vs. Besson Sovereign posted by Jay Bertolet on December 25, 2001 at 20:52:06:

Jay, several extra three-pointers for practicing self-restraint.

Dr. Young, I really enjoyed talking with you when we met, and often appreciate
your perspective.
I ALSO (believe it or not) appreciate personal frustration
when MY perspectives are not embraced or (for reasons unbeknownst to me) they elicit
disagreement or acrimony or worse. If this sounds like anything familiar, then know there's a lil empathy out here.

ALL that said, more than once I've sat with a friend play-testing horns, and this friend would sound great on just about everything. Sometimes (like in the case of the first two CC's I ever got) he played each for less than about a minute, put the horns down, and offered to buy them! Most recently, same player, different horn, incredible sound and range....when he put the horn down after a couple of minutes, he said "unplay-able."
Wierd, because the end product (as far as my ears could tell) was just as high quality.
To MY mind, nuttin' wrong with "a bit 'o work", but for mamny pro's it's important to seek the best combinations of buttons tubes, sound, and manage-ability. For each person there's a different combination that feels right, and (in general) only specific individual horns (not models or types or materials or color or waveform) are more universally regarded as good'uns. As I understand, most of the folks who've played certain historical instruments (for example) feel this way about those mythic horns. But (I guess) for some they just don't work? I think Dr. Young if we cross paths again I hope I have my 30-year-old (not ready for consignment to the antiquities bureau) holton so we can swap horns and I can have a go with that bundle 'o snakes Gronitz/King of yours, just to see if I can figure what all the fuss is about. Oh, f.w.i.w. I just acquired a tuba converted from vienna-system to 6 more-or-less "standard" valves (well the first 3-4 anyway) so as I putz around with it I AM somewhat sympathetic to the more analytical/tubing-length-control-specific way of thinking. Still, I got the horn for it's SOUND...the fact that intonation is manage-able with 6 buttons and a weak mediocre-player's face like mine is ok...if I get f tuba chops after years of work, all the better!

I worry about the dissection of music into waveforms and tuners and such, because in my simple mind the whole of what we do is greater than the sum of the individual parts, and even though the engineer-science-guy that I may be wants to grasp and control ALL the parts-even if I COULD, I'd still miss SOMEthing when distilling the final equation.


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