Once again my son, bass trombone and tuba expert, has changed my thinking on pedal tone, but beyond my technique. He discovered that if he plays a Farkas XDC mouthpiece with essentially a trumpet emboucher, he gets a quite good horn sound. He's been around good hornplayers long enough to emulate a strong, professional sound, good enough for tutti work, and quite good for jazz, since he retains the jazz trumpeters ability to play in the altissimo range.
Coupled with this is tremendous competence in the pedal range for all low brass. With the XDC mouthpiece and his technique, the pedal notes on the horn don't present much difficulty. He has a tuba collection, about ten horns, that covers the possible range of horns, including a couple in Eb with only three valves. He has a real aversion to C and F tubas because they need so many valves to play in tune. The only tuba he owns with four valves is an 1855 contrabass Saxhorn, which is a collectors item because it is the earliest example of a modern four valve system historians have seen. What I never realized is that a really good tuba player routinely plays down to the pedal tones using notes that aren't in the harmonic series. He just lips them into tune. A three valve Eb has no problem playing the modern BBb or CC range, and the notes are indistinguishable from legitimate notes. He much prefers three valves and an adjustable tuning slide in his left hand. He can do it on any of his horns, but some are easier than others. He demonstrated the same thing on a horn, but the F horn is in the more difficult category. He suspects a really good 4th player might have learned the technique since many of them do their really low playing on the Bb horn to take advantage of the increased agility with the shorter air column. I'm passing on this tuba tidbit as it was news to me that playing these notes is more than just an obnoxious rehearsal trick. Does anyone know of a high level 4th specialist that uses this trick for horn? In a message dated 1/10/2005 9:51:21 PM Eastern Standard Time, Paul Mansur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >On Monday, January 10, 2005, at 08:58 PM, Steve Freides wrote: > >> but can one also learn to play the fundamental pitch on >> the open F horn and the valved notes below that? >> >Definitely possible; but not everyone can play all these notes. I can >get the C,*(F concert) but the concert c down there is out of my range. > Probably out of a lot of folks' range. > >Cheers, PM > >_______________________________________________ >post: horn@music.memphis.edu >unsubscribe or set options at >http://music.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/billbamberg%40aol.com >
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