Posted by Ed Heckman on January 25, 2001 at 10:26:27:
In Reply to: Re: Re: 7 Valve Tuba posted by Ed Heckman on January 24, 2001 at 21:36:52:
>> What will a tuba built 100 years from now be like?
>> Maybe it'll have fancy electronics embedded in the valves.
Hmmm, come to think of it...
I suppose it would not be hard to place a sensor on the leadpipe to find the partial being played. Combine that with optical sensors on the valves and it should be pretty simple to identify which note is being played. Then add voice-coil type selenoids to the slides. Tie these all to a microprocessor, and it should be simple to tune the entire instrument. In tuning mode, you would just adjust the slide positions to make every note play in tune and the control system could remember those positions. Then in play mode, the electronics would make sure the slides move to the appropriate positions for each note.
Come to think of it, it would probably be wise to add a tuner to the system so it could adjust as the conditions change over the course of a concert.
Of course, the system would have to respond very, very quickly, which would take a lot of power. But with a large enough Lithium Ion Polymer battery and freely moving slides, it should be possible to create a system that could handle a 3-hour Pat Sheridan concert.
Of course, you would have to make sure you keep your hands away from the slides as you're playing. At those speeds, one of those flying slides could probably break a finger. :-)
Does anybody know of a good cheap horn that can be experimented on?
Ed "What the" Heckman