The replies on list to your question are very accurate and I reinforce the sentiment: It totally depends on the fingering combo of the trill and whether I have to cross partials. I think Klaus puts it best in his post (at least, that is the one that stated it the most accurately and fully, in my opinion).
People have alluded to the first valve and second valve being used in trills. You may already know this, but depressing the 1st valve adds a whole step's worth of tubing to whatever note you're playing, so drops the note by a whole step. The 2nd valve does a half step, so e.g. if I play a C (open) and press the 2nd valve, it drops me to a B. Or, if I've already got the 3rd valve pressed down to play A, I can still just press the second valve to produce Ab. Maybe the way for you to do this would be to get a comprehensive fingering chart. This would tell you which half-step and whole-step trills can be used. As for low, long, and loud.. as the adage goes, pick two. It's real tough to sustain a low, long, loud tone. The loud is mostly the tough part of it. I am a pretty good low horn player, with average breath control. I would say any low note is fine loud for about 4 seconds. I can probably play the octave below middle C (our written low G) as loud as possible for 6-8 seconds. I can play it as soft as possible probably for something like 20 seconds (comfortably). The octave below that, our pedal G, I can hold for about 12 seconds as soft as possible. Probably 4-5 seconds as loud as possible. I think people differ very broadly on this statistic, though. *Thank you* for being so conscientious about your horn part writing. Marc Gelfo _______________________________________________ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
