Posted by Leland on April 10, 1999 at 17:55:14:
In Reply to: Re: Re: sound quality posted by Max on April 10, 1999 at 11:50:10:
Small rooms can have an effect on "intonation perception", too. It's probably less of a problem on trumpet than tuba just because of the wavelengths involved, but sometimes a resonant pitch of the room is very close to a pitch on the horn. When trying to play right down the most resonant part of the horn on that note, the room can actually steer the player to its own pitch. Likewise, a played note that's a half step away from a room resonance will feel exceptionally dead no matter how it's played.
From my experiences, it is true that spending lots of practice time in a small room almost always results in a small sound, and it's usually because of how loud the instrument really is. Normal performance volumes can be just painful in the wrong room, so a typical reaction would be to back off of the sound. One way around this would be to use earplugs of some sort so that the sound doesn't seem so blindingly loud. Another prettier-sounding but more costly method would be a Silent Brass system.
I spent much of my formative tuba time with a quintet in a large church with a pipe organ, and my first few times in a practice room were both revealing (OH, that's what my tonguing sounds like!) and just LOUD.
OTOH, most of the players at my school who had no such large-room experiences have problems being heard over a piano in the recital hall. The correlation between practice room size and the player's sound is so dependable that I can't dismiss it as merely an individual tendency.
Seeya,
Leland