Trumpets – How do they work?

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 08/08/2019 at 10:23 • Filed to: trumpetlopnik

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I’m having an ongoing discussion with my brother about the mathematics involved in the intervals of music, mathematics I don’t claim to understand. All I really understand is the trumpet, and how a trumpet manages to play so many notes with just three buttons. So, since Oppo seems to have a rather wide and eclectic range of interests, I thought I’d share an explanation of that here. It might be a bit TL;DR, but I find it fascinating, and thought somebody else here might find it interesting also. Maybe go get yourself a cup of coffee.

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What a trumpet might look like

People have been making noise by blowing through things for centuries, and examples of the earliest form of an instrument sounded by buzzing one’s lips through an amplifying device dates to the Egyptians and even before that to people who blew through !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . By the Baroque period (for simplicity, let’s say 1600-1750), trumpets had evolved to what might be thought of giant bugles, and only a limited number of notes were available (a bit more on that later). It wasn’t until the 1800s that work began on a system of valves that could alter the length of the trumpet by diverting the air flow through an additional length of tubing. The Germans developed a system that used a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! valve, while the French worked on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! valve, the up-and-down system we are most familiar with today, at least on this side of the Atlantic.

If you were to blow through a trumpet and not press any of the valves down, the air would go directly through the horn and you could produce a collection of notes that we call the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The lowest note of the series is called the fundamental, and it has a specific frequency. Each note in the series above the fundamental is called a partial, and each partial is a multiple of the frequency of the fundamental. At the lower end of the series, the notes are relatively far apart. But as the notes get higher the partials get closer together. If you go high enough, you can basically play a scale (notes on adjacent lines and spaces on the staff) without using any valves. That’s how the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of Bach’s day, with no valves, were able to play a melody. [1]

If you listened to the Handel recording (and you really should, it’s quite lovely), you will hear that the lower notes that Steele-Perkins played sounded a bit like a bugle. As he went higher, though, he could play a scale. That’s because he was working his way up through the harmonic series.

But what exactly is the harmonic series?

As we said, it’s a series of notes that bear a mathematical relationship to the lowest playable note. Here is the harmonic series for a modern trumpet in the key of C. All of these notes are playable with no valves depressed (open), which means that these are all the notes you can play with your trumpet at its shortest length.

So what exactly do the valves do?

When you push down the valve of the trumpet, the column of air is diverted through an adjacent length of pipe before continuing out of the bell, thereby making the instrument longer. The longer the tube, the lower the instrument (see: !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ). The second valve has the shortest attached tube, followed by the first valve, then the third. The third alone is essentially equal to the length of the first and second valves combined, though it is rarely used alone.

The three valves can be depressed in seven combinations we call fingerings, and by following a prescribed set of fingering combinations you can lengthen the horn by one half step at a time and cover exactly half an octave. Here are the valve combinations as they would be on a trumpet pitched in C (the picture above shows a trumpet pitched in B-flat, but why there are differently pitched trumpets is an entirely different discussion for a different day and lots more coffee).

As with the open instrument, each combination of valves generates its own harmonic series based on the lowered note. If you work your way through the combinations and descend half an octave, then stack all the harmonic series together for each valve combination, you have covered the entire chromatic scale (every black and white note on the piano keyboard) and you have an chromatic instrument using just three buttons instead of the the four fingers required on a string instrument (but who wants to play a viola?), or the 1o fingers required on a woodwind instrument (wait, aren’t flutes made of metal?). Percussion instruments, in general, go BOOM.

The bottom line of the chart shows the harmonic series of the trumpet with all the valves (or pistons, to use the French term) depressed. [2] This is the horn at its greatest length, and the notes available to that valve combination are shown from left to right (the fundamental is omitted, since it’s generally not a usable note, and the chart begins with the second partial). As you move upward in the chart, you are shortening the horn by half steps, with each lowest note and its own harmonic series shown left to right. Now, if you stack up all the different notes in each harmonic series and trace all of those notes up to the top line, you see that you have covered all the notes of the chromatic scale.

You will also notice that there is a bit of overlap. For example, the A on the second space can be played either 1+2 or 3. The fourth line D-sharp (E-flat) can be played either 2 or 2+3. We call these alternate fingerings, and while they both produce the same note they each have a slightly different tuning and timbre, so one fingering is generally preferred over the other, but it’s nice to have an option from time to time.

Trumpets are all about overtones. Get over it.

When a trumpet plays a given note, all of the upper notes of that note’s harmonic series are present in the vibrating column of air, though they are not necessarily sounding. [3] These are called overtones (be sure to check out at least the first half of the video above). When two trumpets are playing together, those overtones interact to make a whole bunch of vibrations and, at certain points, those overtones overlap so that both trumpets are generating the same overtones while playing different notes. And it is those overtones that must be in tune to create a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . This is a note that exists in the air, you can hear it in your ear, but nobody is actually playing that sound. It is being created by the interactions of other notes and vibrations which we cannot hear. When you hear that resultant tone, you know that you and your friend are really, really, really in tune. And those overtones can overlap not only in consonant harmonies like 6ths and 3rds or 4ths, 5ths and octaves, but also dissonances like 2nds and 7ths. As I’ve told my students, even dissonance must be in tune.

Bonus Trombone Content!

So, we’ve been speaking only about the valved brass instruments. But what about the trombone? With no valves, the trombone should theoretically be the most perfectly in-tune brass instrument. (Having sat in front of trombones for more than 30 years, I can assure you that is not always the case.) However, the principle of the instrument is the same as regards the harmonic series. With the slide all the way in (first position), you can play the fundamental note of the instrument (which happens to be B-flat). As you extend the slide through the positions (a total of 7 which, interestingly, is the same number of valve combinations on the trumpet), you are lengthening the instrument and lowering the fundamental to obtain a different harmonic series for each position. I’m not going to do another big chart like the trumpet chart. It would take too long and look about the same anyway.

It seems a bit counterintuitive to my left-to-right brain, but the higher notes are on the left of this fretboard, and they get lower as you move right. Just think of it as lengthening the guitar string, the same as you are lengthening the trombone.

Just like the trumpet, there are notes that overlap between the different positions, and the player will choose the slide position that works best for a given note in a given passage. However, each position is not the same distance apart. The distance from 1st to 2nd position is, let’s say, x , while the distance from 2nd to 3rd is x + (a little bit) . From 3rd to 4th is (x + (a little bit)) + (a little bit more). Each position is progressively farther away than the previous one. If you look at a guitar fretboard, you will see the same thing. Each fret is a half step apart, but the frets get farther apart as you go lower on the instrument. Certainly, there is some math involved in this, too, but I was told once that if you can count to three you can play music, so that’s all I concern myself with.

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If you’ve made it this far, you now have copious amounts of new knowledge which, combined with $3, will get you a cup of bad coffee at Starbucks. But this also underscores the difficulty of playing a brass instrument. With so many different notes available for one valve combination, you can see why it’s so easy to miss notes. And it’s even harder on the French horn, since they have significantly more tubing than the trumpet does, which means they are often playing higher in the harmonic series where the notes are much closer together. So, next time you hear a horn player frack a note, have some pity on them. The struggle is real.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy your coffee.

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[1] I could do it on a modern trumpet, but the notes would be in the stratosphere. Bach’s trumpets were about eight feet long, or about twice the length of a modern trumpet. Therefore, the scale on Bach’s trumpet occurred an octave lower than it would on my trumpet.

[2] The piston valve was invented by a Frenchman named !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , while the rotary valve, like the one seen on a French horn, was an earlier invention by a man named !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Also, the French horn is not French, it’s German. Neither is the English horn English. It’s French. But that’s another story.

[3] There is an entire industry of trumpet manufacturers who work to make these overtones, as they are called, more or less present in the sound. In a gross generalization, more overtones makes for a brighter, more vibrant sound, while fewer overtones make for a duller or darker sound.

Additional reading: !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

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This is me playing a trumpet.

Dogsatemypants > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 10:30

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Trumpets have v tech

CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 10:39

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I thought that TRUMPETLOPNIK would be reserved for our discussion when 45 got a dog

ttyymmnn > Dogsatemypants 08/08/2019 at 10:41

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Yo.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 10:54

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This is good Oppo! “W iggle fingers here” on your diagram made me spray tea across my desk. That is the funniest thing I’ve read so far today. I also learned a lot.

jimz > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 10:54

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just to add a bit of info, the acoustic phenomenon at work here is resonance. as you work the valves/slide you are (as you described) changing the length of the horn. When you change the length of the horn, you are changing the mass of the air column inside it. making it longer increases the mass of the air, shorter decreases it. The more air mass you have in the horn, the lower the frequency it wants to “naturally” vibrate (resonate) at. I have a few sets of pneumatic horns like this:

these are floating-disc reed horns, and the “noisemaking” part is exactly the same for both. the reeds are the same mass, and the volume of the reed chambers is the same. the different horn length is why one plays F3 and the other A3.

ttyymmnn > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 08/08/2019 at 11:00

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Cool! Glad you enjoyed it. I had fun writing it. And I worked very hard with the tone, trying to write it for somebody who knew next to nothing about the trumpet or even music. 

ttyymmnn > jimz 08/08/2019 at 11:03

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Neat. Thanks. A lot of students also wonder why a cold instrument plays flat, while a hot instrument plays sharp. It all has to do with sound waves moving more slowly in a cold medium (I’m sure there is a more sciency answer than that, but it suffices). It’s also fun to see what happens to the sound when you burp while playing and introduce methane into the system. 

MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever 08/08/2019 at 11:04

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I thought he already had one

jimz > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 11:10

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Cold air is denser and will have more mass for a given volume.

ttyymmnn > jimz 08/08/2019 at 11:10

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There you go. Thanks.

ttyymmnn > jimz 08/08/2019 at 11:14

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WilliamsSW > MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s 08/08/2019 at 11:16

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+1 basset hound 

WilliamsSW > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 11:17

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Great stuff! As a former player, I knew some of this but nowhere near as much.

But you missed an opportunity to title this “fucking trumpets, how do they work?”

ttyymmnn > WilliamsSW 08/08/2019 at 11:20

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Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it.

Yeah, I thought about that, but I’m trying not to follow the Gawker “profanity for profanity’s sake because it makes me sound edgy” vibe. It’s a gimmick, like the comedian who can’t get a laugh, so he pulls his pants down to get a laugh. 

WilliamsSW > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 11:23

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True, but in this case the profanity would make it a more direct reference to the silliness of the Insane Clown Posse.

It is good to avoid those words in the title at least though .

ttyymmnn > WilliamsSW 08/08/2019 at 11:25

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I also might share this to non-Oppo people. Although Nibby pretty much ruined any chance of that....

Pickup_man > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 11:32

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As a former woodwind player, this is really cool. I farted around with brass instruments like any band kid is wont to do, but this really puts it in to perspective as to how difficult it is to play a brass instrument. It also gives me a whole new respect for my buddy who played the french horn. I remember that he struggled with it, and unfortunately at the time I chalked that up to him just not being a great player (and I think he did too) but this really helps understand how difficult it really was to play well.

I would love to see a similar right up for wood winds. One particular question, that maybe you could answer now is about the functional differences of the octave key between the clarinet, and sax. I was primarily a clarinet player but played a bit of sax/bari sax for jazz band and distinctly remember that while the use of the octave key was the same when going up an octave, the clarinet required a different set of fingerings for the upper octave vs the lower, while the sax used the same fingerings in both. Why is that?

vicali > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 11:37

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Played trombone for 5 years in school, 3 was fingers before the bell, 4 was fingers past the bell..

But we were always in front of the fancy trumpets, but behind the showboat saxamaphones ..

ttyymmnn > Pickup_man 08/08/2019 at 11:38

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One particular question, that maybe you could answer now is about the functional differences of the octave key between the clarinet, and sax

I wish I could tell you. I have three degrees, all of them in trumpet performance, so I really know precious little about the other instruments, particularly woodwinds and strings. I did teach a brass methods course a few years ago, so I had to at least familiarize myself with the other brass instruments. But unlike a music educator, I never learned any others.

My only guess is that it has something to do with the lengths of the instruments. The clarinet being shorter, you are dealing with higher parts of the harmonic series where the notes are closer together, and different fingerings either facilitate intonation or simply getting the right notes. I can ask my son’s clarinet teacher, though.

Thanks for reading!

ttyymmnn > vicali 08/08/2019 at 11:39

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That would be the jazz band setup. In orchestra, we usually end up in front of the trombones, tough some orchestras put all the brass in one line across the back. 

BrianGriffin thinks “reliable” is just a state of mind > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 11:39

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Then you bring out the valved  trombone or one of...whatever these are...and things get really cray. 

vicali > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 11:40

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Y ep it was stage band. , when we sat with the full band we were in the back with the tubas..

Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 11:41

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Cool stuff.

The fun thing about trombone positions is that they need to be tweaked a bit for the individual instrument. Second position on my concert horn is ever so slightly sharp compared to my marching horn.

My college music class professor lectured on the physics of music. I thought it one of the best parts of the class.

Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 11:44

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I suspect there may also be a contribution from the fact that metal expands with heat, and that can change the length of the air path a bit, although I confess I don’t know how much of a contribution that makes, it any. 

MiniGTI - now with XJ6 > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 11:45

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Works the same on organ pipes. As you know I’m an organ tuner and in large instruments that are spread around the room the different departments can be at different temperatures causing havoc (or at least the pitch to drift apart). This is also why organs are seldom even close to A-440 unless in a tightly temperature controlled building.

A division built above the boiler room will be sharp in winter; the exposed pipes that get hit with AC will be flat in summer.

Also the math that governs the dimensions of organ pipes in surprisingly complex. 

ttyymmnn > BrianGriffin thinks “reliable” is just a state of mind 08/08/2019 at 11:48

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We tend to think of the valve trombone as some bastardization that Maynard Ferguson came up with, but they were prevalent in the operas of Verdi. He wrote passages for the bones that would have had to use valves, and players today simply do a glissando instead.

That’s some crazy-assed sort of cimbasso .

ttyymmnn > Chariotoflove 08/08/2019 at 11:49

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And at the end of the day, I can quote a horn professor at Rice, Tom Bacon:

“Brass players don’t tune. The play in tune.”

ClassicDatsunDebate > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 11:50

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Great post!

Horn players have forced me to be a better musician. Ive learned  to transpose everything to B flat or E flat. ;)

ttyymmnn > Chariotoflove 08/08/2019 at 11:51

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It is my understanding that the expansion/contraction of the metal is negligible. Though it may occur, it’s not enough to make a difference. Of course, there are ways to contract your instrument to the point that it does make a difference.

ttyymmnn > MiniGTI - now with XJ6 08/08/2019 at 11:53

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I play an annual graduation ceremony in an un-air conditioned chapel. The organ there was always horribly out of tune, and they finally replaced it with an electronic instrument. I’m generally no fan of electronic organs, but it made all the sense in the world in this setting.

ttyymmnn > ClassicDatsunDebate 08/08/2019 at 11:55

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Thanks! Transposition is a crazy thing. For those of us who do it all the time (I have to transpose to A-flat, A, B-flat, occasionally B, C, D, E-flat, E, F, and occasionally G), it’s not big deal. To woodwind and string players who rarely, if ever, transpose, it can be utterly befuddling. And never mind that B-flat and C tuba doesn’t transpose, they just learn two different sets of fingerings. 

ClassicDatsunDebate > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 12:08

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It’s easier for pattern based instruments like guitar and keys to transpose as opposed to a linear scaled instrument like a trumpet.  Easier to slide down a whole step then to ask a sax player to jam in F.

WilliamsSW > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 12:16

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Yeah, that took a strange turn.

Surprisingly!

Snuze: Needs another Swede > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 12:23

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Thats an awesome description, I really enjoyed reading it. I played the baritone in 5th grade band and HATED IT! Mainly because it was a loaner from the school and a huge piece of crap - the valves stuck all the time. Aside from that bit of misery I really had never given much consideration to the inner workings of a valved horn. 

However, as an engineer who does a lot of work in acoustics, I appreciate the ASA paper. I’ve spent a lot of time digging in their archives and reading papers, though not usually on instruments. 

On the subject of overtones, I work with a guy who’s graduate thesis was on the characterization of the tone of the american banjo. Basically he bought a really cheap $99 Amazon banjo (or something like that) and also had access to a really high end fancy one that was several grand.  He made detailed recordings and measurements, both audibly with microphones and with instrumentation (i.e. accelerometers) on various parts of the banjo body.  He was able to essentially map out the contributions of different components to the overall tone of the instrument, and proved this by making a few upgrades to the Amazon banjo and got it sounding pretty close to the fancy banjo. 

7:07 > MiniGTI - now with XJ6 08/08/2019 at 12:27

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You’re an organ tuner? Awesome! I’m an organist, and don’t know many that tune, and even fewer that would admit it!

As you already know, t he organ is an instrument of math. All organs have 8' stops (piano pitch) and 4' stops (an octave higher), but there are also stops, indicated by the fractions, that specifically to outline the series of overtones : 8' , 4', 2 2/3, 2', 1 3/5, 1 1/3, 1'.

Normally the mutation stops are used to add color to an ensemble, but you can draw those stops (minus the 1 1/3') to create a solo stop knows as the “Cornet. ” It’s a very much well used sound in Baroque music. In this example, the melody is played using the Cornet combination of stops:

Great post, ttyymmnn!

ttyymmnn > ClassicDatsunDebate 08/08/2019 at 12:28

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And even easier if you can break out of a linear way of thinking and get into a vertical way of thinking, using chords instead of melodies.

jimz > MiniGTI - now with XJ6 08/08/2019 at 12:30

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did you hear Wurlitzer is merging with Xerox?

they’re going to make reproductive organs.

jimz > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 12:35

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heh. This is what mine sound like:

7:07 > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 12:35

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It’s interesting that resultant tones are part of brass playing. I didn’t realize that. Some organs have 32' resultant stops, as full-length wood 32' pipes are very expensive, they’ll combine a 16' stop with the Q uint 10 2/3' stop (it just plays a fifth above whatever pedal note you are playing) to give a passable resemblance to a real 32' stop.

I love listening to brass ensembles, as they aren’t bound by tuning temperaments and can lock pitches to create perfect intervals.  I love unaccompanied choral groups, probably for the same reason.

ClassicDatsunDebate > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 12:43

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That’s really the holey grail of musicianship isn’t it; thinking in chord note intervals and being able to instantly apply it to the note you play.

I’ll stick to scale shapes and chord note patterns :)

ttyymmnn > Snuze: Needs another Swede 08/08/2019 at 12:56

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I should hook you up with my brother (O.C. here on Oppo). He’s a math teacher, and the one geeking out on the mathematics of the intervals, particularly as a way to find an engaging way to teach the math to his students. I should probably understand the physics better than I do, but I’ve never had much of a scientific mind. It’s enough for me to know how to play in tune, not why I’m playing in tune. Although, I will admit, knowing why would likely make me a better teacher.

As regards the banjo, I am immediately reminded of a quote by Ernest Williams, one of the great trumpet pedagogues, and the teacher of my former teacher, Ray Crisara, himself one of the greatest trumpet pedagogues of our generation . Williams said,

“ I never knew a good player who, when given a bad instrument, suddenly became a bad player. Likewise, I never knew a bad player who, when given a good instrument, suddenly became a good player. It’s 90% the man.”

ttyymmnn > jimz 08/08/2019 at 12:58

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Red Wings? Euw.

But I guess we can still be friends.

Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 13:02

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That makes me sad. 

ttyymmnn > 7:07 08/08/2019 at 13:03

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When I’m teaching students to play in tune, I will have them play a concert B-flat while I play a concert D. When that resultant tone kicks in they get pretty wide-eyed. Those imperfect intervals tend to make much stronger resultants on our instruments. Clearly it has something to do with the harmonic series, but why exactly is beyond my grasp. But that’s also why, if you ever write for trumpets, always try to write them in thirds and sixths, and never fourths or fifths. The open perfect  intervals tend to sound like the Roman colosseum, while the imperfect intervals resonate like crazy and sound quite brilliant. As second or third trumpet player, I will always rescore a final chord if the composer has left us open. I’ll drop down to the third or sixth and it sounds significantly better.

ttyymmnn > ClassicDatsunDebate 08/08/2019 at 13:05

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It wasn’t until I was a graduate student, working on my doctorate, that the light finally turned on. I was taking a music theory class with Stefan Kostka, the man who literally wrote the book. He was the first person who actually got me to understand analysis. And suddenly, I could look at all of my trumpet etudes not as melodies but as chord progressions. My accuracy increased significantly because I was no longer using the “point and shoot” method of playing, but was able to put the next note in the chord. It was a truly revelatory moment.

ttyymmnn > Chariotoflove 08/08/2019 at 13:08

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Me too. As the guy demonstrated, that was clearly a playable instrument. Sure, it’s funny to smash it with a hammer, and I’ve certainly wanted to do that to my instruments from time to time (though always, I was the culprit for the bad playing). But that horn, regardless of how “good” or “bad” it was, could have been put in the hands of an aspiring player who couldn’t afford one. 

jimz > Pickup_man 08/08/2019 at 13:23

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I would love to see a similar right up for woodwinds. One particular question, that maybe you could answer now is about the functional differences of the octave key between the clarinet, and sax.

(note that my “wheelhouse” is audio and acoustics, not music, so I’ll probably use different terms for things than what musicians are familiar with. Also not being too familiar with the specific operation of the two instruments, some of this will be a bit of a guess based on general acoustic principles )

I think it comes down to the different shapes of the instruments. The register/octave key doesn’t actually change the frequency the instrument is playing; what it does is “open the pipe” at a particular point along the tube which suppresses the fundamental frequency. Since the fundamental is now suppressed, the lowest note you hear is the 2nd harmonic (overtone) which is an octave higher (2x the fundamental frequency.) So if you were playing A4 (440 Hz) you’d hear the 440 Hz fundamental and varying amounts of harmonics at 880 Hz, 1320 Hz, 1760 Hz, and so on. flip the register key, now the 440 Hz fundamental is suppressed so it sounds as if you’re playing an A5.

A clarinet is basically a straight walled closed pipe, while a sax is a tapered “open” pipe. the resonant characteristics of the two pipes are different, so when using the register key the fundamental resonance of the air column changes in a different way between the two instruments. therefore requiring different keying.

jimz > 7:07 08/08/2019 at 13:33

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in audio/psychoacoustics we call that the “missing fundamental” trick. it gets used in audio processing for things like “bass enhancers” or “virtual subwoofers.” for example, if you have a system where you want the listener to hear content all the way down to- say- 44 Hz (F1) but the speakers aren’t capable of playing that low, you “blend in” some harmonics at 88 and 176 in a ratio a speaker would usually produce, thereby fooling the brain into thinking it hears the 44 Hz fundamental. Usually they concentrate on the even harmonics (2nd and 4th) because it “warms” the sound while the odd harmonics (3rd and 5th) are avoided because they are perceived more as unwanted distortion.

you still won’t get the visceral impact you’d get from a large subwoofer, but it’ll still “round out” the overall sound. 

MiniGTI - now with XJ6 > 7:07 08/08/2019 at 14:31

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Oh sure, amazing how the convenience of low C being surprisingly close to 8’ length lends the whole pitch scheme to Base2 math.

It’s when you get into scaling (length vs diameter), mouth width and cut up things get exciting. The default formula is - when ascending the musical scale every 17th pipe is half the diameter. The formula for generating the schedule of diameters is really complex.

Also I’ve heard some dreadful attempts by people who claim to be organ tuners. It’s not really that hard, but there’s lots of people doing it that don’t have a clue. 

7:07 > MiniGTI - now with XJ6 08/08/2019 at 15:48

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It’s when you get into scaling (length vs diameter), mouth width and cut up things get exciting.

Isn’t this what determines the “accent” of the organ, say Cavaillé -Coll vs Willis, for example? I don’t have a whole lot of experience around actual pipe instruments, as there aren’t many around me, but the mechanical aspect of them are intriguing and I need to learn more.  A friend of mine gave me some small flue pipes and a reed pipe so I can have something to study.  Fascinating to know how long this type of instrument has been around.  

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 08/08/2019 at 21:28

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Excellent post! I started playing music on the violin, so I had to learn early on how to adjust to make sure I played in tune with the others in the orchestra. Even though I spent many years playing a variety of woodwinds after moving to a town with a band (not an orchestra) , we never really went into music theory, so I never learned much beyond how to adjust my embouchure when playing in different oc taves to stay in tune.

I’ve learned a bit more since picking up the guitar. Most surprising to me is the problem with tempera ment. Tune a guitar to sound great on one chord and the others which don’t use the same fundamental will sound out of tune. This site explains it a hell of a lot better than I c an!   https://blog.discmakers.com/2017/08/why-you-cant-tune-a-guitar/

One   solution to the problem is to install non-standard “true-tempered” frets.

Weird, huh?

Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious > ttyymmnn 08/09/2019 at 00:04

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Ahem. Some of us woodwind people learn to transpose just fine. In general, C clarinets are not commonly owned, but if you play any German operettas, you learn to transpose on B-flat if you want to keep the job. Same for orchestral works written for clarinet in D (transposed to B-flat), bass clarinet in A (transposed to B-flat), and all the times that composers assumed that we could swap from B-flat to A (and vice versa) in less than 0.2 seconds.

As a director, I’ve also become adept at reading any concert band standard instrument with a clarinet, saxophone, trumpet (my trumpet range tops out at top line F...I mean, I can actually play to the A, but not with a tone I want my students to replicate), or euphonium. Anything in treble B-flat or E-flat (which we know is a cheat, so maybe it doesn’t count), I can read on trombone, as well. I can read any treble B-flat line with flute, and my horn playing is best when I’m reading a horn part. (I’m surprisingly adept at reading horn parts with a trombone, though!) The big glitch for me is trying to read a bass clef part with a flute, or trying to read a flute/oboe part with a trombone (I can do it with a euphonium, though)...something about that particular combination just confuses me, as if reading intervals suddenly became foreign. The less that is said concerning my ability to play double reeds or tuba with any sort of actual proficiency, the better.

Anyways, woodwinds and transposing. Gary Garner, when he was director of bands at West Texas A and M, waaaay back in the day...was famous for studying his scores to the point of being able to play every individual part of every score he conducted, on his flute, in the correct key. You’re the 4th horn player, and you keep screwing up the tempo transition in Persechetti’s Parable for Band? Garner would stop rehearsal, pick up his flute, and play your part for you without flinching.

(No, I’m no   modern- day Gary Garner. I’m not even the middle school version of Gary Garner, although I do play through every part of my band’s contest literature on the actual instruments, save for double reeds and tuba.)

ttyymmnn > Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious 08/09/2019 at 00:34

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Well, I did say “rarely.”

German operettas aside, how often does an orchestral or band clarinet player have to transpose on sight, unless it’s a situation where there’s not enough time to switch instruments? I honestly don’t know. I didn’t think it was that often, and I’ve been in situations on gigs where the singer wants something up or down a step and most of the winds were completely lost.

And your score reading skills certainly outstrip mine. But then again, I rarely have need to read an orchestral score.

The big glitch for me is trying to read a bass clef part with a flute

I am actually rather adept at reading bass clef, at least on C trumpet . When trumpets players transpose to E or E-flat, we generally look at the treble clef notes but read them in bass clef. So, a bottom space F becomes an A (or A-flat) . Otherwise, we transpose by interval. My former teacher learned all of his transpositions by reading the line in different clefs: alto clef, mezzo soprano clef, etc. That makes a lot of sense, but it’s just not a method that is taught any more.

Where I get hung up is when I’m playing along with my son while he plays his euphonium. It’s a bass clef part, so I can play my C trumpet, but he’s using what are, to me, B-flat fingerings. So the G that is open for me is 1-2 for him. It can make my head hurt.

pickup_man had a question in this thread about saxophone vs clarinet that I couldn’t answer. Maybe you could pop up there and answer his question for him.

Thanks for the reply.

Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious > Pickup_man 08/09/2019 at 00:48

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I can answer that for you. It’s a physics and geometry issue.

Geometrically, f lutes are open-ended cylinders , while saxophones and oboes are closed-ended cones . As you overblow (or simulate the overblow, via the register key on saxophone/oboe ) these specific geometric shapes, they follow the harmonic series precisely: the low register is the fundamental harmonic, the high register is the second harmonic. The first two harmonics are easy. However, when you hit the third harmonic (a perfect fifth above the octave), that’s when things get wonky, and you start to need weird fingerings, because not only are you now a fifth off of the fundamental and octave, you are also having to create a double overblow to reach that third harmonic. You are, in essence, having to vent the instrument artificially to create another register key (or...the first register key, in the case of the flute).  

Clarinets, geometrically, are closed-ended cylinders. They are the same shape as flutes, but because they are closed on one end, the sound waves that bounce between the closed end (mouthpiece and reed) and the first open tone hole have a different response when overblown. (I can’t remember exactly why...my gut is telling me it has to do with the substantial backpressure of the air in closed cylinder...whereas the back- pressure in a closed cone is dissipated by the exp anding size of the resonating space...the acoustic physics course I had to take in music school was LITERALLY twenty years ago, fall 1999...a lot has fallen through cracks since then.) The resulting change is that closed-end cylinders skip all of the even numbered harmonics. The low (chalumeau) register is the fundamental harmonic, while the “high” (clarion) register skips right to the third harmonic, the 8va + P5. The altissimo is the fifth harmonic (we gap the left index finger as an additional register key), which is the M6 above the previous harmonic.

The skips in the harmonic series are why the clarinet has so many extra keys: it has to fill in the gap between the first and third harmonic. The actual natural lowest note in the chalumeau register is low F , and the actual true highest note is the open G . That means the next possible note that can be naturally play ed is the 8va + P5 above that G...the clarion C. There’s a whole perfect fourth that is missing from the clarinetist’s natural scale. As a result, we drill extra holes above open G to get G#, A, and A#...all of which sound pretty terrible (tonally) compared to the rest of the instrument. This is the dreaded throat register that we complain about, because acoustically, they are literally FALSE TONES on instrument.

Ah, but we are still missing one more semitone before the natural C on the next register, the B! This is another false tone - we create the B by ADDING an additional lower tone to the bottom of the first register. The low E on clarinet (the lowest tone, except on bass clarinets and basset horns/basset clarinets) was created purely so that we could create the missing B. In order for this low E/upper B to exist on a tube that acoustically stops on low F/upper C, the very end of the resonant tube must flare dramatically compared to the rest of the cylinder...since it is not a mathematically consistent expansion from one end to the other (like saxophone or oboe), and only at the very end for the sake of the low E/upper B, the clarinet still functions acoustically as a closed-ended cylinder. But because of the dramatic physical distortion that happens at the bottom end, intonation on these four tones is BAAAAD, and we’ve yet to come up with a viable solution that still retains a consistent tone in these four notes. The (false) low E is dreadfully flat, but it’s 8va +P5 harmonic is dreadfully sharp! Hey, you’re playing B-flat clarinet in orchestra? Good luck tuning to that A from the oboe, since the clarinet wants to play it 20 cents sharp! As the low F/upper C are the bridge tones to the false and atrocious low E/upper B, they also suffer, but less so - low F can usually be lipped up slightly, while the upper C is typically about 5 to 7 cents sharp, which we tweak by using the center of the clarinet as a tuning slide (this renders the low register even more flat, however, and is dangerous depending on what literature or part you are playing).

So, the short answer, clarinets gonna clarinet because their instruments acoustically only create odd-numbered harmonics.

Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious > ttyymmnn 08/09/2019 at 00:48

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No need to ask. I just gave the explanation. ^_^

Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious > ttyymmnn 08/09/2019 at 00:55

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I NEVER CONSIDERED GASEOUS DENSITY WHEN THINKING ABOUT THE PITCH DIP DURING A BURP!!! I have always assumed that sudden drop in air speed caused the brief flatness, as clarinets require high air speed all the time. (As much as band directors talk about “ warm” air, clarinets and double reeds are pretty much ALWAYS in “cold” air mode, because resistance.)

Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious > ttyymmnn 08/09/2019 at 01:00

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Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious > ttyymmnn 08/09/2019 at 02:01

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It’s fun talking shop. ^_^ I believe the clef cheat is how Gary Garner supposedly did it; he could read in all the choral clefs, so in his brain, C could be any line he needed it to be. I can’t function outside of treble or bass myself.

Where I get hung up is when I’m playing along with my son while he plays his euphonium. It’s a bass clef part, so I can play my C trumpet, but he’s using what are, to me, B-flat fingerings. So the G that is open for me is 1-2 for him. It can make my head hurt.

That’ s incredibly intriguing to me! I suspect that I was able to do that because I was hired to be the brass instructor, and I was reading and teaching bass clef DAILY. I admit, I don’t know the trumpet orchestral literature well at all, but...do you EVER have to read bass clef in C professionally? If you didn’t have a practical and consistent need for it (it’d be like me trying to read an A clarinet part with an alto sax...why would I ever need this?), then it’s pretty reasonable that you’d struggle. I was teaching all beginning brass together multiple times a day, every day, and often alternating demo instruments throughout the week. You ever play your son’s euphonium for giggles? There’s a surprising bit of joy in playing through a beginner method on a new instrument as an adult. (At least, there was for me.) I suppose, considering you gig so much more than I, there is a concern that you might start to alter your trumpet embouchure unknowingly, which is a completely legitimate concern.

ttyymmnn > Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious 08/09/2019 at 08:19

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Interesting about the shapes of the cylinders. Of course, with brass instruments, we are only worried about cylindrical or conical tubing. In the second video I posted, the guy shows how it’s very hard to play the fundamental in tune on a trumpet (cylindrical) , while it’s dead simple to play the fundamental on a flugelhorn (conical). And that’s all down to the different tapers of the tube.

So, after all that about the clarinet (and I admit, I glazed over once or twice), what does it mean when a clarinet player has to “play across the break?”

ttyymmnn > Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious 08/09/2019 at 08:23

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Does she cover the end of the barrel to provide the necessary resistance?

I remember many, many, many years ago attending a children's concert with the symphony. The bassoon player was doing a similar display, where she started out with the whole instrument and gradually took it apart down to the reed. Then she reassembled it and, when she played the absolute lowest note with all the holes covered, confetti came out of the top. 

ttyymmnn > Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious 08/09/2019 at 08:37

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do you EVER have to read bass clef in C professionally?

Aside from reading a treble clef part in bass clef to facilitate transposition, i t’s exceedingly rare. There are some Baroque orchestral works where the third trumpet can drop down to the bass clef into the principal range. And I seem to recall the odd classical piece where we might have a single note that drops down into bass clef. Obviously, we just take that up an octave by necessity.

T here is the bass trumpet, which I suppose would be similar in range to the trombone. It’s most famous appearance is in the Rite of Spring, but despite its range it is notated in treble clef, probably for the same reason we have TC baritone/euphonium. It seems that there is a bit of a niche for bass trumpet jazz, but I have never listened to any. I guess I should at least check it out.

Of course, horn players regularly play in bass clef, but they have a wide enough range to encompass both sides of middle C.

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 08/09/2019 at 08:45

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Crazy frets. When I first saw that photo on my phone, I thought it was a necktie.

I am pretty familiar with temperaments, though I don’t use them in practice. My father owns and plays a harpsichord (a gorgeous instrument built 30-some years ago by a guy in PA), and he has a stack of cards that indicate the tuning for the different Baroque temperament tunings. Back in those days, they believed that different tunings would produce different emotional effects, and they also did temperaments to have the instrument sound very well in a given key (as you know with the guitar). Of course, once you tune the harpsichord for a specific key, remote keys can sound, in my father’s words, “rather dyspeptic.” But the composers took advantage of that dyspepsia, and wrote movements in different keys to take advantage of the sightly off-kilter intonation.

I had never thought of tuning a guitar with temperaments, but of course, it makes sense.

ttyymmnn > ttyymmnn 08/09/2019 at 08:49

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https://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/brassacoustics.html

I haven’t had a chance to look at this very closely, but might be some good info here. 

Pickup_man > Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious 08/09/2019 at 09:20

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That’s a whole lot to process, but it seems to make sense. Thanks!

Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious > ttyymmnn 08/09/2019 at 21:03

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Partly pitch and partly resistance. Definitely for pitch when she’s down to the upper joint, as the left hand C is crazy sharp unless you cover the bore to bring the pitch in line. But on the barrel, she’s getting a bit of a pitch scoop as she’s releasing it, which is actually written in the soloist’s part.

Neat piece. I don’t think it’s nearly as cool as the Metamorphosis, since you get to physically destroy a trumpet, basically, but fun nonetheless.

Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious > ttyymmnn 08/09/2019 at 21:14

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The “break” is the cross from the chalumeau to the clarion registers - the spot between Bb and B. The throat Bb is the highest note in the low register, and the B is the lowest note in the upper register. The first time students tend to encounter this is in the concert B-flat scale, crossing upwards from the A to the B. You go from the instrument being its shortest (throat A or Bb) to it’s longest in a single move. This is troublesome for two reasons. First, you are essentially going from no fingers covering any holes to EVERY FINGER covering EVERY HOLE, all at the exact same moment. The second reason is the the pressure change that happens within the cylinder, because on the A (or B-flat), the end nodes of the soundwaves are only about 3 inches apart, but as you move to the B, suddenly the nodes are almost two feet apart. The physical coordination required is often the initial challenge, and the pressure change initially creates uncertainty and hesitance in students when they first experience it, so they start to needlessly compensate by warping their embouchure as they cross. Realistically, you just teach the fingers to move very accurately, and just let the instrument do its thing.

My clarinet prof fixed me quite brilliantly - he got me to cross the break DOWNward, to go from higher pressure to lower pressure, slurred, to break me physically and mentally from thinking that I needed to change my face. Once I was doing that (and fixed my fingers), crossing upward became effortless.

Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious > ttyymmnn 08/09/2019 at 21:16

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Also, I LOOOOOVE the different colours that come from conical vs cylindrical tubes in brass. Cornets and euphoniums? Love love love that darkness.

Snuze: Needs another Swede > ttyymmnn 08/10/2019 at 00:19

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I didn’t realize he’s your brother. But seeing the pic of you playing the trumpet, and having seen his pic with his new pupper, I can see the resemblance. I’ve already talked to him a bunch, both here and via e-mail. At one point I was trying to help him track down a real Gortex Blueberry (Navy digital camo jacket). Actually, you just reminded me of something, I may reach out to him. I was voluntold to teach an “Acoustics 101" course to a Navy group we are doing some testing with. A teachers perspective would be most helpful, especially since I’m trying to keep it around the 8th grade level, give or take a grade or two.

As for the banjo, you are absolutely right. It’s just like with cars - having a fast car doesn’t mean your a great driver. But a good driver can use a fast car to it’s full potential. But the point of his banjo study wasn’t to be good, it was basically just to “chase tone” as my guitar playing friends say. I n fact, oddly enough my coworker isn’t even a banjo player, he’s a bass player. But he had access to this super fancy expensive banjo via a friend, so it was more of a matter of convenience. He wanted to mathematically quantify the “ tone” (quotes because this is what my musician friends say, tone means something entirely different to me) of a cheap instrument and an expensive one and then figure out where that “ tone” came from.

In other words, I’m sure you can tell the difference between a cheap beginners trumpet and a high quality instrument meant for a professional musician. But what if we could take a $300 beginner trumpet and put a piece of tape here, a bead of weld there, lengthen this tube by 1/4", etc., and make it sound just like some fancy expensive trumpet?

Just for shits and giggles, here’s some information from my Acoustics 101 course I’m developing that might help shed some light on what I mean. I’ve adapted this information to the trumpet, mainly by googling trumpets and using whatever came up. I’m just going to trust that the internet isn’t lying to me regarding how loud a trumpet is and what it’s working frequency range is. Also, I had to adapt this to air. My job is focused on underwater acoustics. Same principles apply though.

Now, b efore we get too crazy, let me tell you a bit about decibel math. In airborne acoustics we report S ound P ressure L evels (SPL) in decibels (dB) in reference to a pressure of 20 micro Pascals (uPa). The reason for choosing 20 uPa is that it is generally accepted as the the lower limit of pressure sensitivity of a human eardrum. It’s roughly equivalent to the sound pressure generated by a buzzing mosquito 1 meter from your head. In other words it’s a tiny amount of pressure. The 1 meter bit is also important as we often do range correction when we talk about very large things making noise and we are listening over very long distances. But I’ll spare you that.

We use decibels because it’s a logarithmic function that allows us to more easily compare a small number to a huge number . The formula for SPL is SPL = 20*Log10(Ps/Pr) where Ps is the measured source pressure and Pr is the reference pressure (20 uPa). An SPL of 150 dB will instantly rupture the average persons eardrum. So how much pressure is that? 150 = 20 * Log10 (Ps/20 uPa) => 10^7.5 * 20 uPa = 632 million uPa. That’s a pretty huge range of pressures between the quietest thing we can hear and something that will cause instant deafness. That’s why dB is often easier than talking about absolute pressures.

A few quick dB tips that should help you. First, a 10 dB increase represents an order of magnitude increase. So if your trumpet is 80 dB, and a trombone player next to you is 90 dB, he’s not (10/80=.125) 12.5% louder... he’s 10x as loud   as you are! Some other convenient references in dB math are 3 dB = 2x as loud, 7 dB = 5x as loud. Also negatives work as fractions in decibels, so -3 dB is 1/2 as loud, -7 dB is 1/5 as loud, etc . And this is all relative, so 3 0 dB is 10x louder than 2 0 dB but also 8 0 dB is 10x louder than 70 dB. If something is 20 dB louder, it’s 10x10 times as loud, so 100x louder.

I’m guessing as a musician none of that is really important to you because it doesn’t help you play better, but hopefully now you have a better understanding of SPL and decibels and all that stuff. The one important thing to note is that, according to the G oogles, if you’re blasting your trumpet, maybe jamming out to some Dizzy Gillespie, at full tilt you can be producing SPLs as high as 132 dB. While that’s not enough to cause instant deafness (150 dB) it s enough to cause some instant hearing damage. Even wearing good earplugs with a NRR of 29 dB, you’re ears are getting slammed with 103 dB which has an exposure time limit of 7.5 minutes before hearing damage beings occurring . Note, that’s 7.5 minutes at constant 103 dB, likely when you’re playing you’re SPL is varying over time, so it’s not as grave a concern as it might first appear, but still, hearing damage is cumulative, so m ake sure you wear your ear plugs!

One other thing, I’ve been a little sloppy interchanging SPL and loudness. Loudness is largely a function of human perception but it is based on physical factors including SPL and frequency. A perfect human ear can be excited by frequencies ranging from 20 to 200 kHz. However, the ear acts like a band-pass filter, meaning it attenuates sounds above and below a certain range. This is a huge field of study, psycho-acoustics , how we perceive sound, but it’s interesting. But one of the big things is there are “weighting curves” that scientists and engineers can apply to machine collected data to get a better idea of how it would be perceived by a human.

My hot and dirty engineering take is that on the standard “A-weighted” curve the 1 dB down point are 800 and 8,000 Hz. That means everything between 8 00 Hz and 8,000 Hz is less than 1 dB off the measured SPL. In other words, your brain is linearly processing sound, dB for dB in this range . The 3 dB down points (remember 3 dB is 1/2) are 500 Hz and about 11,000 Hz. So at those frequencies your brain processes sounds as being about half as loud as the actual pressure hitting your ears. In theory if you play G#5 (831 Hz) and then play B4 (494 Hz) with the same amount of force (pressure) behind them, the B4 should sound about half as loud. It’s not that it’s actually quieter, it should be the same amount of pressure, your ear drum is just physically less sensitive to it, so less signal gets to your brain, so you only think it’s quieter. If you ever get a chance to try this , let me know how it goes .

There’s one other thing that’s important, and that’s attenuation of sound in air. Ambient effects like temperature and humidity affect how sound travels in the air, but the effects are not equal for all frequencies. In general higher frequencies attenuate faster over distances because they vibrate the air more rapidly and dissipate in the form of head. For example that B4 attenuates at 0.004 dB/m while a higher frequency like B8 (7902 Hz) has 0.103 dB/m of attenuation, or in other words 26 times as much. It may not seem like much, but when you take geometr ic spreading into account (I won’t subject you to this) , it adds up fast.

Okay, not that you are an expert on dB math & psycho-acoustics , here’s some sweet trumpet content. The following is a harmonic spectrum level plot of a trumpet playing F#3 (185 Hz) :

The trumpeter is playing F#3 (185 Hz) at about 55 dB. The 2x harmonic (370 Hz) is about 52 dB, in other words about half as loud . But the 3x harmonic (555 Hz) is 60 dB, which means it’s about 4x the SPL.

Now, here’s where things get interesting. That 2x harmonic 370 Hz, which also happens to be the frequency of F #4, and that high SPL 3x harmonic is 555 Hz, which is only 1 Hz away from C#5 (554 Hz). In other words, nobody is going to tell the difference. But it’s a good thing that the 5x harmonic (925 Hz) is 10 dB lower than the base note, because 925 Hz doesn’t correspond to a note! It falls right between A5 (880 Hz) and A5 # (932 Hz).

I just realize this, but wouldn’t the 5x harmonic be a 2nd or 7th, or a dissonant? I think I just reversed explained that to you from the engineers side. I don’t know? I’m actually kind of an idiot when it comes to music. That one year of baritone 25 years ago obviously didn’t do much for me. I do play drums a bit, but there’s way less math involved. I just hit stuff... sometimes in time with the music!

Anyways, that plot above was a simple view, someone just picked up the tone levels, but here’s a spectrogram of a different trumpet playing A3 (220 Hz):

Squint at the picture a little bit, kind of imagine all those spikes going away so you’re just kind of left with a big hump that peaks around -48 dB. As a side note, this plot isn’t reference corrected like the previous plot but all the ratios hold true - another reason why dB are useful in acoustics - I can still glean information out of this even without knowing the absolute pressures involved . Anyways, t hat big hump is the “noise floor”, which is the acoustic equivalent of the static “ snow” on an old analog TV set when you set the dial for a channel you didn’t receive. It’s all the out of phase, i.e. non-harmonic, sounds being generated by the trumpet.

The first big hump centered around 220 Hz is the A3 note and the other peaks are it’s harmonics. Note how on this trumpet, playing this note, the 3x, 4x, 5x, and 6x harmonics are all much higher in level than the base frequency. The 5x harmonic of A3 is 1100 Hz, which falls between C6 and C#6. Also, note that the first plot stopped at 11x but in this plot we can clearly see harmon ic spikes out to 22x (4840 Hz), even if their absolute level isn’t that high, their relative level to the noise floor and to the base note is pretty high.

Those harmonics, and their levels as well as their shape (as well as overtones) are what what makes one trumpet sound different from another. I’m not an expert on musical instruments, but I would guess that a “brighter” trumpet would likely have a more distinct base frequency - the 220 Hz hump would be taller and skinnier instead of the Grimmace looking guy we have here. It also might show even higher harmonic levels, especially further out. For example the 10th and 11th harmonics might be more prominent, and you might see more contribution from the 14th and higher harmonics. A “dirtier” sounding instrument would have a relatively wide base frequency, wide and short harmonics, and probably a higher noise floor, giving it a “muddy” tone.

Overtones, which are much harder to discern on the plot, are basically non-harmonic tones. They aren’t a multiple of the base frequency of a note. They are probably the result of resonances setting up within certain part of the instrument, or flow irregularities . But as you said, different companies chase these, and in different ways, as it changes the overall sound of an instrument.

So there you have it, an intro to acoustics. If you got this far, please let me know what you think.

ttyymmnn > Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious 08/10/2019 at 00:44

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Great explanation. Thanks.

ttyymmnn > Snuze: Needs another Swede 08/12/2019 at 10:00

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In other words, I’m sure you can tell the difference between a cheap beginners trumpet and a high quality instrument meant for a professional musician. But what if we could take a $300 beginner trumpet and put a piece of tape here, a bead of weld there, lengthen this tube by 1/4", etc., and make it sound just like some fancy expensive trumpet?

You could do some, but most of the differences between “good” and “bad” trumpets lie in the materials and workmanship. As you might imagine, there is a ton of science involved in making high-level professional trumpets, with all sorts of experimentation into different alloys, placement of braces, different wires in the rim of the bell, etc . You get to a certain point where all of those instruments sound “ good,” but will play differently by different players and the player finds the horn that best suits his/her style.

As far as the “bad horn good player” discussion goes, here’s one of my former teachers playing a plastic trumpet. As plastic trumpets go, this is probably one of the better ones, but you get the idea.

So if your trumpet is 80 dB, and a trombone player next to you is 90 dB, he’s not (10/80=.125) 12.5% louder... he’s 10x as loud as you are!

An apt example. The trombone is the straightest brass instrument, and thereby has the fewest turns in the pipe to slow things down. I once knew a trombone player who could drown out an entire basketball stadium. It was a wonder to behold.

The one important thing to note is that, according to the Googles, if you’re blasting your trumpet, maybe jamming out to some Dizzy Gillespie, at full tilt you can be producing SPLs as high as 132 dB. While that’s not enough to cause instant deafness (150 dB) it s enough to cause some instant hearing damage.

This is actually a legitimate concern. I sit directly in front of the bass trombone player in the orchestra, and he holds his horn straight out, like he’s in marching band. It’s pretty much pointing directly at the back of my head. Using a sound shield behind my chair helps, but it’s not perfect. And earplugs kill too much of the sound and aren’t practical in most cases. It’s one thing to plug up around a jackhammer, but I have to hear the other jackhammers in the orchestra to do my job. The EU has actually started regulating orchestras as a hazardous workplace environment as regards hearing loss. I’ve already got some tinnitus.

So there you have it, an intro to acoustics. If you got this far, please let me know what you think.

I’m going to have to read this a couple more times in order to make some sense out of it. But what interests me is that there might be something useful here to the player, not just the instrument maker. It would be fun to sit down down somebody like yourself and some diagnostic equipment and fool around and see what you could do. I know there are lots of trumpet players out there who completely geek out on stuff like this (I am definitely not one of them), and more googling would probably turn up much more trumpet-specific research. And trombone, too, since those guys can geek out even harder on stuff like this.

Thanks of much for the lengthy response. One of the great things about Oppo is that there is such a wide range of expertise, and people who are passionate about those things they know a lot about. I’m going to forward this to another trumpet friend and see what he makes of it. He’s a bit more of a scholar than I am. I tend to sit in the back of the orchestra and try my best to play in tune.

Cheers.

Snuze: Needs another Swede > ttyymmnn 08/12/2019 at 15:53

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Wow, thanks for taking the time to read all that and reply. Oppo is definitely a great place to share information, cars and otherwise. I’m glad your experiences jive with my math. It means I’m (probably) doing it right.

Regarding “ bad” vs. “ good” trumpet you’re right, there’s only so much you can do. Going back to my friend’s experiment with the banjo, I suspect it’s easier to do that sort of thing on an instrument like a banjo (and this probably extends to other string instruments, as well as percussion instruments) where there are discrete components that you can swap out . I think on a trumpet you can only make so many easy changes before you just end up building a new trumpet.

W orkmanship & materials play a key component. It would be an interesting study to compare things like bends vs. alignment. Bad, non-mandrel, bends will cause flow irregularities as the air speeds up and s lows down, and in extreme cases causes reversion. But poor alignment of the pipe causes eddies and vorticies to develop. I wonder how each problem a ffects the resultant sound?

I listened to the plastic trumpet and am rather impressed. I’m not sure what I expected other than maybe more kazoo . I suspect Tromba did a lot of testing and prototyping to arrive at that. One of the benefits of plastic is the materials are cheap so it was probably pretty inexpensive and relatively easy to create different prototypes to test until they got the exact sound they wanted. Hmm.. now I’m thinking about a 3D printed trumpet. I wonder how well (or poorly) that would work.

As far as hearing protection, have you ever looked at SureFire Sonic Defender EP3s? They are ear plugs with a pass-through port that contains a mechanical amplitude filter that attenuates sound proportional to it’s volume, so at low volumes it provides relatively little attenuation and at high levels they provide a lot more attenuation (I don’t recall exact numbers but it’s like 1-2 dB @ 60 dB and 24 dB @ 120 dB). I’ve only used them at a range, so only quiet or very loud, so I can’t speak to their performance at inbetween levels, but if they do work as advertised it might be a good option. And they are only about $10 for a set so it may be worth a try.

Thank you for taking the time to read all that. I tried my best to go light on the math - I didn’t try to walk you through the solution to the acoustic wave equation , so there’s that. But knowing how to talk decibels is pretty fundamental to acoustics, which is why I included it . There’s a few more tricks and rules I forgot that I need to add. As I mentioned, this dovetails with a work project, and when I started responding I wasn’t intending to write you a treatise on acoustics, but I hit a good flow so I just kept rolling with it. It was incredibly helpful to me to get my thoughts organized for my project. And your feedback is appreciated, as well as that of anyone you share it with.

ttyymmnn > Snuze: Needs another Swede 08/12/2019 at 16:28

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I think on a trumpet you can only make so many easy changes before you just end up building a new trumpet.

There are some trumpets (and trombones) that allow you to swap out components like the lead pipe (the part directly behind the mouthpiece), and bells. Tuning slides can be swapped on many horns (rounded vs squared). It all boils down to what feels and sounds best to the player, and that is ultimately entirely subjective.

The guy playing the plastic trumpet would probably sound good on a conch shell . He’s an extraordinary player, one of those guys who can blaze through a piece like that first one and show no signs whatsoever of doing any work. Such an efficient, effortless player.

As far as hearing protection, have you ever looked at SureFire Sonic Defender EP3s?

I have not really done any serious looking into earplugs. My colleague has plugs that he got from an audiologist that were made to molds taken of his ear canals. That’s probably the route I need to go. I will check out your suggestions, though. I did buy some (Etymotic) that I thought would work well, but they still deaden too many of the overtones/harmonics. It feels like playing underwater. And they don’t fit well. If it were marching band, it wouldn’t matter as much. But in a symphony orchestra, I really need to be able to hear all of it.

Thank you for taking the time to read all that.

My pleasure. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

Snuze: Needs another Swede > ttyymmnn 08/12/2019 at 17:58

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There are some trumpets (and trombones) that allow you to swap out components

A modular trumpet would be perfect for expe rimenting with. I had no idea these existed. Now I have a very crazy idea - back when I was riding my CBR1000RR that Micron was making “Serpent” headers (see below) . The flat bend is there in the first 90 out of the cylinder head to maintain a more uniform velocity and minimize reversions in the highest velocity section of the exhaust tubing . I now want to make a trumpet like this .

I did buy some (Etymotic) that I thought would work well, but they still deaden too many of the overtones/harmonics.

I haven’t heard of them, but I looked them up and they seem similar to the Defenders, though I’m not sure if they are the same, or work on the same principle. I did notice on the website that they have a newer version that’s supposed to improve performance (i.e. actually not reduce as much sound) at 4 kHz and above. If you have the older set maybe these new ones will work for you? It looks like a the Etymotics are designed to provide a straight 20 dB cut across the spectrum. I found the tech specs on the Surefires and their cut rolls- off in amplitude below 85 dB. But the cut also rolls- up with increasing frequency, which is the part of the sound spectrum you want to preserve, so I suspect they aren’t going to work for you.

I feel a science project coming on...

ttyymmnn > Snuze: Needs another Swede 08/12/2019 at 18:38

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I tried one of the modular horns a few years ago and hated it. In order to swap components, they have to be held on by set screws. The thing had some nasty vibrations. Many players become obsessed with finding the perfect combination of horn parts. I’ve never been able to afford to play around like that, and believe that the best thing you can do is find a good horn and learn to play it well. There is no perfect horn.

Thanks for the earplug info. I’ll look into it.