Posted by Rick Denney on February 28, 2001 at 09:53:05:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: BB industry! posted by Steve H. on February 28, 2001 at 00:01:49:
And yet a Miraphone 186 BBb and a 186 CC sound similarly and play similarly. Not the same, perhaps, from the player's perspective, but darn close. It's difficult as a player to compare, though, because the mind wants certain buttons to equal certain pitches, but I'd bet you could not tell the difference from behind a screen between a good player playing a 186 BBb and then switching to a 186 CC, unless he was trying to make a difference.
But you can compare a Miraphone to a York (heh, heh). Each has their own qualities that are related to their design, and each has their own properties related to pitch. If you remove the one (easy with a Miraphone), you can evaluate the other. The difference between a 186 BBb and a York CC is identical (to my ears, and I'd bet to yours, too, if the test was properly conducted) to the difference between a 186 CC and a York CC.
Some horns are designed to have a big, fluffy sound, in the direction of a sousaphone, which many call a "Bb" sound. Does this sound stem from the pitch or from the design? Some of the conversion gurus who have played their creations before and after might shed light on this. Most of the folks I've heard who had experience making these comparisons say that a horn with "that Bb sound" as a BBb will have "that Bb sound" after it's converted to a CC. That leads me to believe that the sound isn't related to the pitch as much as it is to the design of the horn, unless the pitch difference is large. And none of the BBb instruments used in Germany have that sort of a sound anyway--the preference of players there is a rotary BBb kaiserbass, which is anything but fluffy sounding.
The concept of "blend" is interesting to me. I played my Yamaha 621 F (bright) in a quartet with a Miraphone 186 CC (played with a dark sound by a great player), a Miraphone compensating euphonium (dark), and a Miraphone uncompensated rotary (NOT oval) "baryton" (bright). These instruments and their players produced four distinct tonalities, but we were often complimented on our blend, and how we could pass from one voice to another without losing the direction of the phrase or the characteristic sound.
I agree that a contrabass trombone presents the most homogeneous sound, but homogeneity and blend ain't the same thing. It seems to me that blend requires a different enough sound so that it is definitely an ensemble playing, and good enough musicians to match each other's intonation and style.
Apples and oranges are always different, but...
Rick "who doesn't notice when one apple is slightly larger than another" Denney