Posted by Jay Bertolet on January 24, 2001 at 16:01:41:
In Reply to: Re: 7 Valve Tuba posted by Mark Wiseman on January 24, 2001 at 15:37:28:
Any tuba based on the "harmonic sequence" is going to have the intonation difficulties of that sequence. I believe this 7 valve tuba was designed to eliminate the intonation problems inherent in using combinations of valves. Such a tuba, conceivably, would eliminate the need for compensating instruments because each valve would be tuned to render the exact interval from a partial. Is that the reason it may not have worked, because each partial requires a different length of tubing to get each gradation of steps? Would the tubing required to lower an upper space G one half step down to F# be a different length than the tubing required to lower bottom line of the staff G one half step down to F#? I'm also curious if the response was indeed better. Using no more than one valve at a time should offer a pretty free blow. Is that what actually happened?