arpthark wrote: ↑Mon Oct 07, 2024 8:23 am
I did a little more digging and found an original Olds catalog and was surprised that Olds offered both a mellophone bugle and a French horn bugle. Here is the ad below. Wonder why they did that? I do agree with the ad copy that it sounds very much horn-like.
The French horn bugle was first, and was the first "mid-voice" horn to be added to the hornline, occupying the sonic space between the soprano and baritone sections. The mellophone bugle came a bit later, but they didn't just replace the French horns when they came around for a couple of reasons.
First, arrangers were happy to have more voices available in the hornline. 2 valves are still pretty limiting to write for, so having more timbres allowed more variation in the sound of the corps. So not only were there French horn and mellophone bugles, but also flugelhorn bugles and alto bugles - sometimes all at the same time. The mid voices of the corps were rife with experimentation.
Second, because the French horn bugles were an octave longer than the mellophones (and altos, and flugels, and sopranos, and meehaphones), they were fully chromatic in the register they played in and thus were able to fill out a lot of harmonies that wouldn't be possible otherwise with a 2-valve hornline. This is why, even after corps started standardizing their mid voices, the French horn remained alongside the mellophone. Having owned one of the rare 3-valve G French horn bugles, I can say that you really don't need the 3rd valve at all.
Some corps did ditch the French horns, mainly because multiple mid-voices were harder to keep in tune and the French horns were notoriously hard to play well while marching. And once three valves were legalized, the French horns no longer really had a purpose and went extinct pretty quickly.
gocsick wrote: ↑Mon Oct 07, 2024 9:06 am
Neat!
I've always wondered why mid-range marching brass took so long to standardize. Mellophone vs marching french horn. Alto/tenor horn etc. Frumpet & mellophonium. Alto cornet.Eb alto flugelhorn Not to mention F vs Bb mellophone. All the other marching voices got their act together pretty quickly but people kept coming up with new and goofy ideas for alto.
As mentioned above, drum corps of the time had a good reason to keep the French horn around alongside the mellophone.
As for outside of drum corps, the answer is simply because it took all of those different instruments to get to an instrument (the marching mellophone) that actually plays well and works well on the field. Mellophoniums are a bear to play and have bad ergonomics, so while they were used by a lot of marching bands because there was no other option in 1957, they weren't good and the bands were eager to replace them with something better. The Getzen frumpet is even worse, it is truly awful. Alto cornet and alto flugelhorn don't project enough for the field, Bb marching French horns are harder to play than mellophones for no upside, and bell-front alto horns look ridiculous (along with American baritones), don't have good ergonomics, and aren't terrible players but aren't great either. Even the first marching mellophones (Olds for example) were not that good.
Alto marching brass was a problem that took a LONG time to properly solve.
I mostly play the slidey thing.
