Anything new with Tubas?
Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2022 6:30 pm
Just curious if anyone had heard of any companies putting new tubas or if there were any prototypes. Stuff like this always gets me interested.
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Anything new with Tubas?
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Re: Anything new with Tubas?
Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2022 7:25 pm
Willson out out a new midsize CC a little while ago. "Merlin"
Re: Anything new with Tubas?
Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2022 8:41 am
A new 5rv 5/4 b flat from Eastman looks interesting.
Re: Anything new with Tubas?
Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2022 12:55 pm
It's not exactly "new" but Robin Hayward with B&S and a few research institutions developed a way to play tuba microtonally.
(His website)https://robinhayward.com/eng/mitontuba.php
From what I can see, it seems to allow you to play between the notes fairly indiscriminately. A selling point listed is the playability of "every conceivable pitch throughout the instrument's five-octave range," which for sure can be obtained by having the valves get you into the ballpark and lipping even ignoring the very specific pitches he has listed in his "microtonal tuba glissando" chart.
The necessity for microtonal instruments for brass, wind, and to a lesser extent, string players is debateable though. Playing of "microtonal" music with synthesizers and other similar fixed-pitch instruments is significantly more feasible since you essentially press a key and a note comes out, but considering how much ear-training it takes to have people play normally-tuned music, it begs the question of whether it's worth it to write/perform music that will require you to ear-train yourself to the peculiar intervals of the tuning system of any given piece. (I mean without a fixed-pitch reference, of course. Imagine a brass quintet playing 29-EDO music without having heard 29-EDO before. I imagine many of the intervals would resolve themselves to their standard tuning counterparts and microtonal steps would be fudged almost across the board.)
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RJ
(His website)https://robinhayward.com/eng/mitontuba.php
From what I can see, it seems to allow you to play between the notes fairly indiscriminately. A selling point listed is the playability of "every conceivable pitch throughout the instrument's five-octave range," which for sure can be obtained by having the valves get you into the ballpark and lipping even ignoring the very specific pitches he has listed in his "microtonal tuba glissando" chart.
The necessity for microtonal instruments for brass, wind, and to a lesser extent, string players is debateable though. Playing of "microtonal" music with synthesizers and other similar fixed-pitch instruments is significantly more feasible since you essentially press a key and a note comes out, but considering how much ear-training it takes to have people play normally-tuned music, it begs the question of whether it's worth it to write/perform music that will require you to ear-train yourself to the peculiar intervals of the tuning system of any given piece. (I mean without a fixed-pitch reference, of course. Imagine a brass quintet playing 29-EDO music without having heard 29-EDO before. I imagine many of the intervals would resolve themselves to their standard tuning counterparts and microtonal steps would be fudged almost across the board.)
--
RJ
Re: Anything new with Tubas?
Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2022 3:12 pm
From now on, if my intonation is off, I will just explain that I’m playing microtonally! 