Posted by Rick Denney on March 20, 2001 at 11:41:57:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Chronic Slide-Pull-emia! posted by Rob P-M on March 20, 2001 at 09:47:13:
Fred Young has done a lot of science on the relationship between intonation and taper design. There is certainly a relationship there, but the intonation variability in otherwise identical horns, let alone the variability among players, tells me that it is not so deterministic as he portrays these days.
There may be other forces at work, too. We had a thread a little while back about how even pulling slides would not affect working intonation in a real group, because we were steering the pitch to that pitch in our heads and overcoming the settings on the horn. Tubas are conical and therefore easy to bend the pitches. The original poster may be working so hard because his horn doesn't match his sense of pitch.
I don't do a lot of slide pulling on my York Master. Why? Because I can't really hear pitch well enough to know if it is wrong. And the group I play with isn't that picky--they can't all settle on one pitch to give me something to aim at. So, I just play such that it sounds right in my head and hope for the best. I've played in quality groups in the past where it hasn't been a problem, and either I'm better at controlling pitch than I think I am, or they were following me around. I suspect it's a little of both.
I would suggest that five mouthpieces may still not represent the one that does the job. I solved much of my intonation problems with a visit to Doug Elliot for a custom mouthpiece.
But I have put tuning sticks on two horns in the past and probably will on the York, too, just to give me a way to adjust when I can hear a problem.
Rick "tone deaf" Denney