Posted by Klaus on August 19, 2001 at 15:01:11:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Vibration, damping, and weight posted by js on August 19, 2001 at 12:42:54:
Be sure of one thing Joe: As always you have put your glowing coals on thin ice!
In my not always so humble, nor even original, opinion there are two main groups of components of brass design, which have significant consequenses for the final acoustically and artistically evaluable output of any given instrument:
A: The bore. With sub-parameters as actual measurements of valve bores, but most likely with the patterns of bore progressions as some very decisive factors.
B: The packaging of the above mentionened bore related factors. Light or heavy mouthpieces. Leadpipes tightly soldered to bells or floating on one or two stays. Light or heavy valve clusters. More or less robust slide receivers in more or less dense metals. Ferrules of heavier military tank or of lighter tutu types. Bells that would withstand years of stevedores’ abuse in loading grain transporters, or bells that would take off into the sky, had they not been soldered to the heavier mainframes of the given instruments. Bells with or without wrenches. Where I specifically take the notion, that these wrenches are not intended as devices placed there by their makers to commemorate the braindeaths of their final customers. (One could be lead to this faulty conclusion, as wreaths almost exclusively are seen on German type rotary instruments. My flame guard? Oh yes, I have such an instrument myself. A Scherzer Bb trumpet, which is a beauty in every sense of the word. Entirely made of red brass and nickel silver. No profanities in form of yellow brass there. And I would be shor dead the very moment somebody learned how cheaply I got it).
Alone within this short listing of variables revealing my uncunningship, there is opened up for quite a number of permutations of variety among the final results of instruments made along acoustical research results (the very few ones despite some makers maintaing otherwise), along national traditions (a quite understandable set of parameters dependent on old schooling), or along calls for recycling of tools (I might be able to name you 52 or 56 samples, maybe even 987. All taken out of the Thatcheristic/Reagonomicstic schools of bushy economies).
And now please enter the decisive factor: the actual player.
We have players, that are independent of any instrumental factor. Yet even these geniuses have their preferences.
We have the players of the physically strong and physically insensitive type. Like one of my old teachers and, as I interprete it, the poster to whom I am replying. Such players can play anything on smaller instruments.
We have players with quite a level of strength in the muscular parts of their wind apparatuses and embouchures, but with a high level of sensivity and intolerance towards obstructions of the winds’ way through their instruments. I most humbly count myself to this group. We go for large in almost any sense. Very often compensating with heavyness.
We have non-countable numbers of groups of players, that in various ways inter- and extrapolate the limitedly described groups from above.
I happen to love an explanation from a book on bowed string instruments I once read:
String instruments bodies are very complex of shape and packaging. They give different overtone ressonances for every microscopical change in pitch played on them. Bad violins give terrible sounds, when played without vibrato, because no optimation through variety in pitch is obtained.
Stellar instruments have a much higher likelyhood of giving an acceptable sound on stiffly kept pitches.
The author of that book provided these conclusions: Stellar players with a thoroughly developed technique can make any instrument sound good. Yet these players are hunting the few available Stradiguarneriuses.
Beginners will sound really well on violins from Guarnerius and other famous makers. Only the option for this is not how our market system is constructed.
If any conclusion should be possible, then the one that humanity is a diversified entity.
Klaus