TrumpetMaster - View Single Post - Your thoughts and input on the new flugels.

Bruce Lee · 11-10-2003, 06:15 PM

noel
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Re: Your thoughts and input on the new flugels
« Reply #14 on: 10/16/2003 at 20:20:31 »

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Hi Leigh. I know we've spoken about my ideas for a flugel in the past but I thought I'd give them a public airing and share my thoughts with this new community.

I was pleased to find that I am not alone in my feelings, in fact I find myself in almost 100% agreement with Horn of Praise (Hi Paul).
In other words, given a clean slate to design a flugel for the 21st century, I would be looking for a radical design in order to try to cure some of the inherent problems with flugels thus far.

First of all, I think it is important to note that the 'classic' flugel shape, with vertical valve slides etc., has only become a standard design fairly recently - go back 50 or 100 years and you will find a miriad of different looking instruments all purporting to be flugels.
I own a couple of beautiful vintage horns myself - one is a Cuesnon from 1898. This is basically in the shape of the modern flugelhorn and I believe it to be a hybrid instrument which came into being when a valve section was added to a french army bugle - this is a short open wrapped bugle with the same size and shape of bell as a modern flugel, not like the short, tightly wrapped english bugle or a cavalry trumpet.
My other vintage flugel is an early 20th century british brass band instrument, a Hawkes & Son Excelsior Sonorous in silver plate with beautiful engraving. This instrument is very similar in design to the instrument featured in the film Brassed Off, which I hope you have all seen. It is wonderfully symetrical and elegant in its design, it has horizontal slides (all on the right of the valves), a reach-over bell and a curved and tapered lead pipe - unlike the simple cylindrical pipe on most flugelhorns.
These are just two examples but I could also mention the rotary valve flugel played by Claudio Roditti or indeed the flugel horn which Miles was using on the Gil Evans projects in the 1950s and 60s.
So to say that unless an instrument has vertical slides it isn't a flugel is - in my humble opinion - rather narrow minded. You might as well say that unless an instrument has the tuning slide on the front bow it isn't a trumpet.

What really decides if an instrument is a flugel or not is the sound.
The sound we try to make ourselves and how we choose to describe it is a matter of taste and perception but commonly used words might be warm, dark, sweet, mellow, pretty, cool, fluffy, breathy, husky, rich, soft, smooth, haunting, smokey, round, sonorous etc...
Personally I would like to be able to make all these kinds of sounds from a flugel - sometimes imitating the noble tones of a french horn, other times making a small sweet core to the note with a fluffy, airy cloud around it, other times making a burning funky phat noise in a horn section ..... and so on.

Maybe I should point out that for me the flugel is a tool of the trade. I NEVER leave home without it in my bag, even though 95% of my work is on the trumpet. I absolutely love playing the flugel, especially for jazz solo work, but it is as a 'doubling' instrument that I use it the most. Very often I will have to pick it up cold with only a few beats rest and begin playing.

This is one of the reasons that I would like the instrument to have horizontal slides and a left-hand bell (like a trumpet). That way I could hold the instrument with exactly the same grip as my regular horn and operate normal slide shunts instead of cumbersome and unfamiliar triggers.

Another advantage with horizontal slides would be the eveness of blow achieved by eliminating the extra resistance caused by the two 90 degree angles whenever you play the first or third valves on a vertical slide flugel.

The main bugbear with most flugels however is the 'idiosyncratic' intonation (they are a b**ch to play in tune) and the extremely vague slots (I know that the bendiness of the notes is one of the things we like about flugels - but sometimes the notes need bending so much to get in tune that they fall off the instrument).

Here I think that the 'Eclipse tunning system' might be the answer. Let's have a fixed and properly tapered lead pipe with a decent reciever and venturi (instead of the crude tube and arbitrary gap we normally find) and move the tunning slide after the valve block. Say a reverse fitting tunning slide on the front bow or, better still, on the back bow - just like the trumpet.
I would go for a small/medium bore through the valves (same stunning valves as the trumpets please - or maybe even shorter throw?) and a bell flare in the classic French style made from a medium weight red brass (nothing too heavy please - maybe 0.6 guage?).
As far as the look of the horn goes I'd trust Leigh 100% to come up with elegant and stunning solutions to the engineering side of things - maybe a few sexy curves here and there - but no fins for me thanks. Oh and it would be nice if it was possible to see past or over the bell to the music/conductor/girl-in-the-front-row...
Well thats about it except to say that I've actually had a dream about playing the first Eclipse flugel. The funny thing is that I can't remember what it looked like, just the way it felt to play - totally hooked up and connected - and the unbelievable sound - like a total dream...

All the best. Noel.

11-10-2003, 06:15 PM	#15 (permalink)
Bruce Lee Piano User Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: HOUSTON, TEXAS Posts: 463	noel New Member member is offline Gender: Posts: 15 Re: Your thoughts and input on the new flugels « Reply #14 on: 10/16/2003 at 20:20:31 » -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Leigh. I know we've spoken about my ideas for a flugel in the past but I thought I'd give them a public airing and share my thoughts with this new community. I was pleased to find that I am not alone in my feelings, in fact I find myself in almost 100% agreement with Horn of Praise (Hi Paul). In other words, given a clean slate to design a flugel for the 21st century, I would be looking for a radical design in order to try to cure some of the inherent problems with flugels thus far. First of all, I think it is important to note that the 'classic' flugel shape, with vertical valve slides etc., has only become a standard design fairly recently - go back 50 or 100 years and you will find a miriad of different looking instruments all purporting to be flugels. I own a couple of beautiful vintage horns myself - one is a Cuesnon from 1898. This is basically in the shape of the modern flugelhorn and I believe it to be a hybrid instrument which came into being when a valve section was added to a french army bugle - this is a short open wrapped bugle with the same size and shape of bell as a modern flugel, not like the short, tightly wrapped english bugle or a cavalry trumpet. My other vintage flugel is an early 20th century british brass band instrument, a Hawkes & Son Excelsior Sonorous in silver plate with beautiful engraving. This instrument is very similar in design to the instrument featured in the film Brassed Off, which I hope you have all seen. It is wonderfully symetrical and elegant in its design, it has horizontal slides (all on the right of the valves), a reach-over bell and a curved and tapered lead pipe - unlike the simple cylindrical pipe on most flugelhorns. These are just two examples but I could also mention the rotary valve flugel played by Claudio Roditti or indeed the flugel horn which Miles was using on the Gil Evans projects in the 1950s and 60s. So to say that unless an instrument has vertical slides it isn't a flugel is - in my humble opinion - rather narrow minded. You might as well say that unless an instrument has the tuning slide on the front bow it isn't a trumpet. What really decides if an instrument is a flugel or not is the sound. The sound we try to make ourselves and how we choose to describe it is a matter of taste and perception but commonly used words might be warm, dark, sweet, mellow, pretty, cool, fluffy, breathy, husky, rich, soft, smooth, haunting, smokey, round, sonorous etc... Personally I would like to be able to make all these kinds of sounds from a flugel - sometimes imitating the noble tones of a french horn, other times making a small sweet core to the note with a fluffy, airy cloud around it, other times making a burning funky phat noise in a horn section ..... and so on. Maybe I should point out that for me the flugel is a tool of the trade. I NEVER leave home without it in my bag, even though 95% of my work is on the trumpet. I absolutely love playing the flugel, especially for jazz solo work, but it is as a 'doubling' instrument that I use it the most. Very often I will have to pick it up cold with only a few beats rest and begin playing. This is one of the reasons that I would like the instrument to have horizontal slides and a left-hand bell (like a trumpet). That way I could hold the instrument with exactly the same grip as my regular horn and operate normal slide shunts instead of cumbersome and unfamiliar triggers. Another advantage with horizontal slides would be the eveness of blow achieved by eliminating the extra resistance caused by the two 90 degree angles whenever you play the first or third valves on a vertical slide flugel. The main bugbear with most flugels however is the 'idiosyncratic' intonation (they are a b**ch to play in tune) and the extremely vague slots (I know that the bendiness of the notes is one of the things we like about flugels - but sometimes the notes need bending so much to get in tune that they fall off the instrument). Here I think that the 'Eclipse tunning system' might be the answer. Let's have a fixed and properly tapered lead pipe with a decent reciever and venturi (instead of the crude tube and arbitrary gap we normally find) and move the tunning slide after the valve block. Say a reverse fitting tunning slide on the front bow or, better still, on the back bow - just like the trumpet. I would go for a small/medium bore through the valves (same stunning valves as the trumpets please - or maybe even shorter throw?) and a bell flare in the classic French style made from a medium weight red brass (nothing too heavy please - maybe 0.6 guage?). As far as the look of the horn goes I'd trust Leigh 100% to come up with elegant and stunning solutions to the engineering side of things - maybe a few sexy curves here and there - but no fins for me thanks. Oh and it would be nice if it was possible to see past or over the bell to the music/conductor/girl-in-the-front-row... Well thats about it except to say that I've actually had a dream about playing the first Eclipse flugel. The funny thing is that I can't remember what it looked like, just the way it felt to play - totally hooked up and connected - and the unbelievable sound - like a total dream... All the best. Noel.