Posted by Rick Denney on January 16, 2001 at 13:16:56:
In Reply to: Re: Chicago York posted by Frederick J. Young on January 14, 2001 at 08:52:29:
I've been thinking about this post all weekend. Other responses speak from the perspective of musicians, but I'm also a scientist and engineer (and much better at both than I am at music) and can't help thinking from that perspective.
I'm confused. A fat bass trombone? What is there about a tuba like the York that resembles a fat bass trombone? The sound of a bass trombone is about as far from a wide-taper instrument like the York as any I can imagine. My little Yamaha F tuba can sound like a fat bass trombone if I want it to, but not a 6/4 contrabass.
My own understanding of metals and materials supports your statement that the materials are not the difference in the case of the York, unless it affected the design decisions made by the maker, such as using thicker metal to account for impurities and coarse grain. They are even less likely to make a difference in the case of a tuba than they are in the trumpets you studied.
I know a highly respected violin maker who laughs at the notion that Strads sound the way they do because of the age of the wood. He insists that Strads are special because of their design--particularly their inconsistencies (the f holes don't line up, and so on). He studied and trained in Cremona, and has measured a number of the real thing. His Strad copies are beautiful sounding, and command an enormous price (though not as much as a real Strad).
His life's work, and his greatest objective, is to make the 15th Stradivarius design. Stradivarius (and his apprentices) used 14 unique designs for violins during his career. My friend wants to learn enough about those 14 instruments so that he can take the next step.
This is not an unscientific approach. In fact, it was exactly the same approach I stumbled upon by accident when doing my thesis research in an engineering topic as devoid of subjectivity as any topic can be. I could not take a next step until all the current work in that topic became transparent to me, even though I ultimately refuted many of those researchers. Any subject that includes uncertainty requires a sufficient empirical understanding of the data (and the population the data represent) to suggest causal relationships. The more variability in the effect, the more work required to gain this understanding.
Tuba design positively bathes in variability and unexplained effects. The tuba maker who will advance on the York will be the one who can say, "Bill Johnson expanded the taper right here because of this reason ____, but he underestimated this effect _____ and over estimated that effect _____. Consequently, we can achieve his objective without those side effects by doing this other thing _____." Or, "The York's bottom bow is this way, because if it was that way it would have this problem and if it was the other way it would have this other problem." We have only hints and musings about the effects of a few of those decisions, and it is entirely possible that Johnson hit upon an effective combination on his York by accident, and modern makers are trying to reproduce that accident repeatably. In so doing, though, we will narrow down on those causes and effects.
In fixing the intonation problems caused by that "bloated" taper, we lose the other characteristics of that horn that make it desirable, and we don't know enough to know how to get those characteristics back without the side effects (taking those effects at face value, anyway).
On the other hand, what is it that we are trying to achieve? In any optimization process, one must define the objective function--that thing that is maximized by optimization. The objective function here is probably circular: We like York-like instruments because we were trained in a tradition that favors York-like sound. A British orchestral player in the early 50's who grew up with the tradition of a tiny Barlow F tuba probably thought Jacobs was playing a Sousaphone, if he chanced to hear the Chicago Symphony. Jacobs preferred the York not because of its intonation, but because of its efficiency in producing the effect he wanted.
Rick "wondering why violins don't have frets" Denney