more on air

[bloke]

Being in better physical shape assists in accomplishing technical/musical tasks more easily, and I have found the best “warm-up“ is to simply take a brisk walk and get my heart pumping - along with a bit of adrenaline. After just sitting around and then commencing practicing, it sometimes sounds - well... - like I’ve just been sitting around.

[Uncle Buck]

bloke "Please do not ask me to record myself 'saying' the Pledge of Allegiance on the trombone. "

Please record yourself 'saying' the Pledge of Allegiance on the trombone. Pretty please.

[bloke]

bloke "Please do not ask me to record myself 'saying' the Pledge of Allegiance on the trombone. "

Please record yourself 'saying' the Pledge of Allegiance on the trombone. Pretty please.

If you will make a recording of yourself play-saying along with it, once I upload it.
...I still haven't figured out how to do it while simultaneously putting my hand over my pack of Marlboro's...

[Uncle Buck]

If you will make a recording of yourself play-saying along with it, once I upload it.

Never learned that particular skill set . . .

[bloke]

For personal religio-philosophical reasons, I just don’t embrace/recite pledges to things that are controlled by men (particularly when goals/objectives can change drastically every 2 to 4 years). I wouldn’t mind doing this for one person - who might find it amusing, but there are quite a few people who would probably be offended, so I’m not going to make a video/post a link.

[hup_d_dup]

Rather, it’s a means. Again, we really don’t have a way to vibrate our lips without blowing air between them, but – if we did – I submit that the air column would still vibrate sympathetically with the vibration of the lips.

In this experiment • https://www.smithwatkins.com/administra ... tech05.pdf • it was shown that vibration alone - with no air flow - will produce sound in a trombone.

Of course, this does not address the concept of air flow from lungs to lips, but it does emphasize the importance of vibration relative to flow.

Hup

[Three Valves]

Vibration with no flow??

Say it ain't so!!

[bloke]

piano/guitar/violin-viola-cello-bass strings, jaw harps, most percussion instruments, and loudspeakers (do not require epic/forced/directed air movement to vibrate.

Vibration with no flow??

Say it ain't so!!

[iiipopes]

Vibration with no flow??

Say it ain't so!!

It's called static wave theory. The best example is waves on a body of water with an unattached buoy with no or very little wind to drive the buoy. As the waves flow across the body of water, it is due to static wave theory, not flow theory. The buoy bobs up and down with the waves, but does not travel with them, except possibly slightly due to the wind which causes the waves. Same thing in a music instrument. The other classic example is the ball park spectator crowd: as "the wave" goes around the ball park, it looks like it is moving, but each person only raises his/her arms then puts them down, but doesn't move from the assigned seat. Once the energy transitions the throat of the mouthpiece, it sets up the pattern of compressions and rarefactions that constitute the vibrations we call pitch, but without flow. There is a famous experiment that smoke is blown into the lead pipe of a tuba. Then the tuba is played normally, observing when the smoke might be seen to be coming out the bell. Because there is minimal, if any, actual flow of the air after the transition, it takes a long, long time for there to be any wisps of smoke to come out the bell. Light photons work in a similar way, as photons are (oversimplified) both matter and energy, but I'm not going to digress into the physics equations. Yes, in some circumstances, there is vibration with no flow. A tutorial:
https://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/sound/u11l1c.cfm

[Three Valves]

Well, sure.

But your @bloke @iiipopes explanations don't rhyme.

Nor do they fit on a bumper sticker.

I win!!

[bloke]

...so - to be epically redundant:

It's probably best to concentrate more RESULTS rather than methods, and some "routines" might possibly (??) be slightly misguided.

I can attempt to blow my personal-maximum cubic millimeters per minute (air flow) through that 50mm hole in the back of the mouthpiece, but I can do with "run off the cats" vibrations emitted from the bell, or with nearly undetectably low vibrations emitted from the bell - depending on whether-or-not I decide to set my lips' edges in motion.

bloke "recalling when some brass players (some of whom were fine, and some who were marginal) wore pieces of PVC plumbing around their necks on pieces of string - back in the 1970's..."

[Rick Denney]

Mike Sanders talked about focusing the airstream to come to a point about two inches beyond the tip of the mouthpiece shank.

Mouth shape, to me, governs how much mouth and lung cavity is available to supplement resonance. The notion of "warm" air requires open cavities inside the mouth and through the throat. Those open cavities, for me, improve the tone. They also increase flow for a given airspeed, or reduce airspeed for a given flow.

Inflated lungs also provide more resonant cavity than depleted lungs.

So, the machinery that increase flow may not work because it increases flow, but rather because it opens resonant cavities behind the embouchure, which seem to me as much involved in tone production as their air inside the tuba.

Is any of the above true? Beats me.

Rick "usually struggling with too small a mouth aperture, which is the incorrect response to too little air supply" Denney

[Uncle Buck]

For personal religio-philosophical reasons, I just don’t embrace/recite pledges to things that are controlled by men (particularly when goals/objectives can change drastically every 2 to 4 years). I wouldn’t mind doing this for one person - who might find it amusing, but there are quite a few people who would probably be offended, so I’m not going to make a video/post a link.

I was being tongue-in-cheek from the start. I've seen people do that trick, just never learned it.

[Mary Ann]

I reached the conclusion that the use of air has to do with how much you need to make the lips vibrate nicely, and really nothing else.

[peterbas]

...

[peterbas]

...

[iiipopes]

Vibration with no flow??

Say it ain't so!!

It's called static wave theory. The best example is waves on a body of water with an unattached buoy with no or very little wind to drive the buoy. As the waves flow across the body of water, it is due to static wave theory, not flow theory. The buoy bobs up and down with the waves, but does not travel with them, except possibly slightly due to the wind which causes the waves. Same thing in a music instrument. The other classic example is the ball park spectator crowd: as "the wave" goes around the ball park, it looks like it is moving, but each person only raises his/her arms then puts them down, but doesn't move from the assigned seat. Once the energy transitions the throat of the mouthpiece, it sets up the pattern of compressions and rarefactions that constitute the vibrations we call pitch, but without flow. There is a famous experiment that smoke is blown into the lead pipe of a tuba. Then the tuba is played normally, observing when the smoke might be seen to be coming out the bell. Because there is minimal, if any, actual flow of the air after the transition, it takes a long, long time for there to be any wisps of smoke to come out the bell. Light photons work in a similar way, as photons are (oversimplified) both matter and energy, but I'm not going to digress into the physics equations. Yes, in some circumstances, there is vibration with no flow. A tutorial:
https://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/sound/u11l1c.cfm

To many misconceptions to let this slide by.
First, it is called a standing wave and it is no theory because these wave exist in real life. The theory is how we explain the wave occurs, but the wave doesn't care about that.
The example of the bobbing buoy is not very good because the move mostly because of transversal waves in the water. Standing waves or hard to detect in open water. Take a surfer, with a transversal wave he moves up/down and also forward. With a standing wave he would just go up/down but he would never reach the beach.
There are standing waves in open water like in the North Sea where there is a standing wave with a period off 36 hours. Now that is what we call a pedal note.

Second, standing sound waves are longitudinal waves. So are surfer would now move back and forth but also never reach the beach.
A perfect standing wave in a tube needs an energy source and two perfect reflection points and it would go on forever. But we need all kind of stuff like a mouthpiece as a player to get energy inside the tuba. Then when a standing wave is formed we should mimic a perfect reflection point as to loose as minimal as possible energy to get a high efficiency.
On the other side we surely don´t want a perfect reflection point because the there would be no sound. So the bell/atmosphere transition is made so bad in energy transfer that most of the wave is reflected to keep it going and a small part is projected into the surroundings so people can be in awe with us, the fantastic tuba players.

The most famous instrument without an air generator must be a tuning fork. Just give it a whack and instant sound occurs.
Another one is a singing glass, there the movement of your fingers is the generator.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDm4IphrlYg

I think the confusion is because sound waves need a medium to travel through and most of the time that is air. So it can be difficult to make a distinction between air as a generator and air as a medium.

I think we are saying the same thing. I oversimplified for the sake of bandwidth. But one item: sound is also a pressure wave as well as a longitudinal wave. The longitudinal wave is set up by the pressure wave in the medium, in this case, air, as you commented.

[bloke]

A friend and I (with sudden VERY loud VERY short higher-range all-valves-down "blasts") used to amuse each other (as well as others) by blowing out matches (with our tubas) back when we were in 11th - 12th grade and freshmen/(sophomoric) sophomores in kolij.

Of course, there is NO WAY that the air could have blown out the those matches, but only via the (OK...) "pressure" of the sudden vibration.

rules:

- The match must be held by someone other than the person "blasting" into the tuba.
- The match must be held (at the very least) barely past the geometric plane defined by the tuba's bell's rim.

(Before anyone else saw us do it, we would offer to pay people $10 if they could blow out a match by blowing through a tuba, if they would offer to pay us $1 if we managed to do it. )

@iiipopes ...Your sousaphone neck was reportedly placed in your mailbox about fifteen minutes ago. I hope it pleases you.

and @Yorkboy...Your project piece is reportedly in your P.O. box...' same sentiment...