Quote:
Originally Posted by Derek Reaban  Bear,
I think your question implies that when you play a 1-3 or 1-2-3 combination, the pitch needs to be adjusted (lowered / lengthened) to be in tune with the rest of the ensemble (i.e. pushing down more valves leads the horn to be sharper than what you would expect to hear for that specific note). |
Congratulations, I think you have correctly understood the question of Mr. Bear. When reading your answer, I understood the question!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Derek Reaban This is by design. The 1st valve slide and 3rd valve slide are “a little” too short (sorry I don’t have the exact numbers). This is to allow the player to adjust easily to the tonal center of a specific piece and the degree of the scale being played.
For instance, let’s say that you are playing the 2nd trumpet part from the chorale in Mahler Symphony No. 2. There is a printed low Ab that repeats for several bars, and since the part is for trumpet in F, you are playing a low Db (i.e. 1-2-3). That pitch acts as the minor third in one chord followed immediately by acting as a major third in the next chord (everyone changes around you).
We all know that we need to throw our slides out to be “in-tune” in most circumstances when we have a 1-2-3 combination, but in this case you have to strongly consider the position of the note in the chord. The minor third need to be 16 cents higher than equal temperament and the major third needs to be 14 cents lower than equal temperament. If the slide were “just the right length” this would lead to problems in this specific example.
The note could be lowered (slide thrown out / lengthened), but the note would not be able to be raised (the slide all the way in would not be short enough). This movement of 30 cents [Minor 3rd (+16) / Major 3rd (-14)] happens infrequently, but horns are designed to be able to “cover all bases” and allow the player that focuses on Just Intonation in all playing situations to be “in-tune” as well as locking in to the most resonant placement of the note on the horn.
Having a horn with adjustable slides in the "all the way in position" be a little too short allows for these special situations.
Hope this helps! |
But the answer isn't correct!
Basically, the valve pipe should be longer when combined with other slides.
Here is an explanation I found:
"
How long should the second valve pipe be? To make the calculation simple, let's imagine that we are designing valves to make a narrow bore, chromatic didjeridu (ie we are going to add valves to a simple cylindrical pipe), whose natural length is 100.0 cm. If the second valve lowers the pitch of the natural pipe by an equal tempered semitone, then it must decrease the frequency by 5.9% and thus increase the length of the instrument by 5.9 cm. So the difference in frequency between - - - and - 2 - is now 5.9%. However, if we are to use the fingering scheme above, we also want the second valve to lower the pitch from 5 to 6 semitones below the natural frequency. Suppose that the first and third valves do lower it by 5 equal tempered, in other words they decrease the pitch by 33.5% and so must together add a length of 33.5 cm. So fingering 1 - 3 has pipe of length 133.5 cm. If we add our 5.9 cm, we increase this to 139.4 cm. This is an increase of 5.9 cm/133.5 cm, which is only 4.4%, which is only three quarters of an equal tempered semitone."
-> 5.9 cm is 5.9% (a semitone) of the pipe when only the second valve is down.
-> 5.9 cm is 4.4% (less than a semitone) of the pipe when 1 2 3 valves are down.
Hope it's understandable.
Fred