For those who played in high school and then put your instrument down for 40 years, you can pick it back up and play again! One of the great joys of my life now is playing trombone in a local band with other people just like me--relearning their instruments and making new friends.
I've been trying to square the physics and my experience.
Pedal B flat is the fundamental, low B flat is the 2x, F 3x, mid B flat the 4x, D the 5X, high F is 6X, G half sharp is 7X and high B flat is 8X.
The position your music teacher most likely will have told you to adjust is 2nd position - you play it slightly sharper for an A vs the E or C sharp it's also used for.
Why is that? It's the major 3rd that has the largest variation between just and equal temperament. The A is often a 3rd against the F, is that why?
But it seems to me that it's all the notes on the D embouchure that will be off -- 1st position D on the trombone is 5X the fundamental, so it's justly tuned, not equally tuned, so shouldn't it be the one that needs the most adjustment? I guess all wind instruments have this problem, so maybe I don't notice because usually I'm playing in a wind band with very few equally tempered instruments like piano, guitar and glockenspiel?
bryanlarsen
One of my favourite albums is Stuart Dempster's Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel.
A group of trombonists all playing in a giant underground water tank with incredibly long reverb.
The best part about playing trombone in high school band was not having to learn concert pitches. Concert F? I play an F. Concert Bb? I play Bb. Suck it, trumpets!
> But any instrument that’s not the piano or guitar can actually make micro-adjustments while playing a song
You can make micro adjustments on a guitar, but only to be sharper[1]
> But for now, one obvious advantage is that this allows us to do “real” glissandos, where the pitch smoothly transitions from one note to another
For a famous example of a "fake" glissando, the opening clarinet solo of Rhapsody in Blue, which, as typically performed, is rather smooth from D5 to C6[2]
One trombone feature not mentioned here is that the length of the pipe apparently affects the timing enough that they have to compensate for it.
vintermann
> But, how can a trombone ever be better than the piano when there’s so many variables? Well, unlike a piano, where each key produces a fixed pitch, a trombone lets me subtly adjust every note as I play.
Thanks, but I'll stick to my keyboard's pitch bend control.
The trombone's great expressiveness comes at a steep learning cost.
liotier
> This system ensures that every key and every note sounds equally good, but it sacrifices the purity of just intonation.
Bach wrote two books of the Well-Tempered Clavier over 300 years ago that explain musically why that sacrifice is worth it:
* Book I: pick a prelude/fugue in any key and it will sound ok on a keyboard that you tuned ahead of time
* Book II: modulate anywhere you want[1] in the middle of a piece and it will sound ok
That same system works all the way through high-Romantic Wagnerian operas and atonal pieces of the 20th century. Use equal temperament and let the singer/violinist/horn player "sweeten" a third by ear where applicable.
comments (10)
New Horizons Band: https://newhorizonsmusic.org/Find_a_Group
jschveibinz
Pedal B flat is the fundamental, low B flat is the 2x, F 3x, mid B flat the 4x, D the 5X, high F is 6X, G half sharp is 7X and high B flat is 8X.
The position your music teacher most likely will have told you to adjust is 2nd position - you play it slightly sharper for an A vs the E or C sharp it's also used for.
Why is that? It's the major 3rd that has the largest variation between just and equal temperament. The A is often a 3rd against the F, is that why?
But it seems to me that it's all the notes on the D embouchure that will be off -- 1st position D on the trombone is 5X the fundamental, so it's justly tuned, not equally tuned, so shouldn't it be the one that needs the most adjustment? I guess all wind instruments have this problem, so maybe I don't notice because usually I'm playing in a wind band with very few equally tempered instruments like piano, guitar and glockenspiel?
bryanlarsen
A group of trombonists all playing in a giant underground water tank with incredibly long reverb.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=4tvMp4XDICU
_spduchamp
lee_ars
Pink Trombone
https://dood.al/pinktrombone/
https://github.com/imaginary/pink-trombone
Evy Kassirer - !!Con 2019 - Reverse engineering your mouth! by Evy Kassirer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTwjirrCuDE&t=34s
Zack Quattan - Pink Trombone Playlist - Gamepad / MIDI / Machine Learning / Phoneme Classifier / etc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LflxVULOtLs&list=PLzgiV7-SLJ...
https://deepwiki.com/zakaton/Pink-Trombone
pink trombone controlled by max msp via OSC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7eJ209ayFw
Circuit Bending - Pink Trombone "Speech Synthesis"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_qd116njyk
How to break Pink Trombone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4FWmlJPxsE
DonHopkins
> But any instrument that’s not the piano or guitar can actually make micro-adjustments while playing a song
You can make micro adjustments on a guitar, but only to be sharper[1]
> But for now, one obvious advantage is that this allows us to do “real” glissandos, where the pitch smoothly transitions from one note to another
For a famous example of a "fake" glissando, the opening clarinet solo of Rhapsody in Blue, which, as typically performed, is rather smooth from D5 to C6[2]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_bending
2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykFWUEHhkMw
aidenn0
[0] https://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical_instruments/winds/tr...
BJones12
vintermann
Thanks, but I'll stick to my keyboard's pitch bend control.
The trombone's great expressiveness comes at a steep learning cost.
liotier
Bach wrote two books of the Well-Tempered Clavier over 300 years ago that explain musically why that sacrifice is worth it:
* Book I: pick a prelude/fugue in any key and it will sound ok on a keyboard that you tuned ahead of time
* Book II: modulate anywhere you want[1] in the middle of a piece and it will sound ok
That same system works all the way through high-Romantic Wagnerian operas and atonal pieces of the 20th century. Use equal temperament and let the singer/violinist/horn player "sweeten" a third by ear where applicable.
Edit: well, anywhere Bach wanted. Hee hee.
jancsika