Posted by Joseph Felton on August 06, 1999 at 13:10:29:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Custom Mouthpieces posted by Jay Bertolet on August 06, 1999 at 08:13:17:
As much as I love the aesthetic beauty of the idea of a perfectly tapered tuba I would like to humbly suggest that you may be barking up the wrong tree here.. or atleast focusing on the wrong limb. This thought just occured to me as I was reflecting on my day so I can't really claim any special insight that you lack. I offer this, for your consideration, as a different potential perspective on the topic at hand.
Here goes:
Premise: It isn't the individual details of an instrument that determine its playing characteristics but rather, the overall taper and balance of those individual details that determine the playing characteristics of a horn. The keyword here is balance. The natural outgrowth of this observation is that if we change any one aspect of a horns design we are actually changing lots of things. I had the wonderful privelege of seeing a lecture by Gerhard Meinl last spiring at IU(Sean was there too I believe.. he may want to jump in on this since he managed to get in the sole question of the evening ;b ). The terms that Gerhard thought of things was that of Sound, Intonation, and Response. When you change something on a horn you change the relationship of those three aspects to each other. I think that that is a wonderful observation. He was actually very cagey about suggesting *any* specific item that he thought had a direct affect on a specific aspect of playing.
On a slight sidenote here.. he also suggested that much of instrument design isn't driven so much by what we may think of as technically 'correct' but rather by what musicians expect of the instrument. For example, the trendy thing right now is for an instrument to be very open blowing but Gerhard had the audacity to suggest that brass players actually use resistance. Don't let the trombone players know this... it'll kill their ego! ;b Think about it.. what is the biggest complaint about F tubas? Terrible low register, right? I would like to suggest that Doug was absolutely dead on right a few posts back. The bore is way too big for the length of the horn and as a result the low register is too open blowing compared to what your typical BBb playing high school student that still insists on playing by feel rather than sound, because they snoozed through that section of the Arnold Jacobs lecture, is used to.(Diagram that sentance!) As you work down into the more involved valve combinations in the low register the 'stuffyness' magically goes away. This is the best example I can think of to illustrate how much amazing control we have over how an instrument plays regardless of the design and also illustrate how a potential design change might make for a closer match to what is 'comfortable' for us. Is comfortable always best? I'm not sure but something tells me that it probably isn't or we would all still be playing 3/4 size small bore students horns because we don't like to use lots of air. hrmm.. that was quite a tangent. My point? The whole thayer valve discussion a while back got me thinking about this and I'm using this as an opportunity to try to set the record straight. Hopefully it will tie in to the rest of this post.
Proof for above premise:
Examples of purposeful interuptions in the conical taper of a tuba with either no change discernable change in playability or actual *improvements* in playability:
-Valves.. piston or rotary.. it doesn't matter.. they pretty much play the same and all of them disrupt air flow. The overall taper of the horn changes dramatically when one is depressed even if you do have a graduated bore and BIG monster piston valves. Often times the fourth rotor on a tuba will blow very different from the other valves because the change is most dramatic but if you spend enough time with a horn that has this 'problem' it will always disappear. The key is focusing on sound and letting your body figure out how to best get the horn to resonate there.
-Check out the Fifth rotor on a Perantucci tuba. The air flow is directed at a right angle even in the open position. Gerhard commented that this was done in order to reflect some air back to the embouchure and give the illusion of more responsiveness than the horn actually has. For players that rely on feel this is a very important crutch and really adds to the playability of those horns.
-I read somewhere that when Rudolf Meinl designs his tubas he starts out with it laid out straight and has someone play pitches into it while he listens down the side and marks where the nodes are. He then uses that information when he designs the wrap. Placing a bend in a strategic location can push a node up or down and dramatically change the pitch of an instrument. Gerhard commented in his lecture that it is very likely that the ideal tuba would have strategically placed dents all over it in order to fix intonation. The problem is that no one would ever buy it!
-The Adjustable Gap Reciever often disrupts air flow and people that really ought to know what they are doing seem to actually like it. It does, however, change the sound, intonaton, and response.
Conclusion:
As much as I like the idea that you are pursuing I think that the idea of a perfectly conical instrument is a false holy grail. This doesn't mean that I think you should try to find a way to have no gap in your reciever. I'm very very curious what kind of affect it would have on a rudy. It is my very very humble opinion, however, that the best way to go about this probably isn't by standardizing recievers and shanks. I'm sold on the AGR gadget that Dillon sells and if I were actually a good enough player to have a complaint about my PT-6 I would actually consider installing one.
As I said at the begining of this post, I don't claim to have any new insights into what you are pursuing.. I just wanted to offer a slightly different perspective.
At any rate, I've stayed up much later than I had intended and I need to catch some sleep.
cheers!
joseph