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What qualities in tuba (CC & BBb) construction create better/more secure slots in the high range? Bore, metal thickness/weight, taper, or other? My HB21 had a great high range. When you landed on a high F it was "there" and very stable... what I used to call slots with hard sides. That HB21 was BIG and VERY HEAVY! Other horns I have had have slots with softer sides - allowing a pitch to slide up or down easily. Does this have more to do with the quality of the overtone series set up in a particular instrument? Might a large bore cylindrical style CC have better high-range slots than a conical style CC?

tj

My best guess is a good taper and seal in the first couple of nodes where that pitch resonates along the horn.

- conservative-sized capillary portion of a mouthpipe
- an instrument itself offering good intonation in that range

the best trumpet player I know:

"You keep missing that pitch, because you are trying to play it in tune."

So I was thinking this morning about construction and slotting. Seems like -- there has to be good resonance for all the notes in the harmonic series for each combination of valves including the open bugle. All those nodes, and no "anti-nodes" at the same time! And given that the same pitch in different positions in a chord that is being played (assuming we are not playing music that requires tempered tuning due to non-traditional "harmonies") it seems like what has to be accomplished is not restricting a pitch within a pretty wide slot for each. Each has to be, at times, the third in a chord, and also has to be able to be a perfect fifth, perfect fourth -- etc. with other pitches. So if slots are too narrow, yup you will miss that note because you're trying to play it in tune with whatever is going on around you. I like wider slots because I can more easily play in tune. My trumpet player friend likes narrow slots WITH the ability to change the length of 1st and 3rd valve slides as needed on the fly. Tuba slide tubes are too heavy to move the way trumpet players can move theirs, with one finger.

So does how loudly you can play have to do with the strength of the resonance achieved by the tapers all through the bugle? Maybe my next life I'll come back as an acoustician who figures out brass instruments to the max, so that all you have to do is breathe into them and they play.

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That reminds me of the golf swing analogy.

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For those who don't know what I'm talking about with the golf swing, it involves someone who has a really bad looking swing and maybe even a hook or a slice and maybe even tops the ball sometimes, but manages to hobble around a golf course and maybe score a 93. Then, someone shows them how to swing a club and how to hold a club and how to have the club at this angle on this part of the swing don't bend their left elbow and this angle at this part of the swing and speed the club up to this much at this part of the swing and how to address the ball and how to keep their head and their shoulders and their legs, and with all that information... yet - with all that information segmented and not put together into one idea and one complete concept - they are no longer able to even hit the ball at all.