Tone Centering for Trumpet (Centering & Tuning) Part III

Dr GO

@ROWUK said in Tone Centering for Trumpet (Centering & Tuning) Part III:

Fortunately, fine trumpets do not have knife edge slots so we can manage and still get great tone. Monette talks a lot about pitch center and how we muscle our bodies to correct design faults and other bad habits. I have done a lot of the things that he recommends and can say that the journey involves more than the resonant center of the instrument. We have to reduce body tension in a serious way to really benefit from the resonant center.

Thankd Rowuk for this perspective. This has been my experience as well. Tension reduction and efficiency are key to the performer. And if the performer is on task than the audience will appreciate a high quality performance.

A Former User

@Dr-GO said in Tone Centering for Trumpet (Centering & Tuning) Part III:

As a moderator, can we make this educational?

Oh my yes! Allow me to refer you to the original post Part III. It also contains two other sites, parts I & II. My hope is that it helps someone who wants help with improving their sound if they feel it needs improving.
Hope this helps

Dr GO

@Dr-Mark said in Tone Centering for Trumpet (Centering & Tuning) Part III:

@Dr-GO said in Tone Centering for Trumpet (Centering & Tuning) Part III:

As a moderator, can we make this educational?

Oh my yes! Allow me to refer you to the original post Part III. It also contains two other sites, parts I & II. My hope is that it helps someone who wants help with improving their sound if they feel it needs improving.
Hope this helps

It helps.

A Former User

@Dr-GO said in Tone Centering for Trumpet (Centering & Tuning) Part III:

It helps.

Man, that's great! Posting stuff with the purpose of helping people is always a crap shoot but I thought this was a good and easy read for those that seek help with their sound. I like that Adams put the information together in a non-jargon manner.

flugelgirl

This exersize is something I have done as part of Bob Findley’s Carmine Caruso method. It’s very effective at finding the most resonant spot of the pitch center. If you haven’t tried bending the note up and down to find that spot - all of a sudden sound will be much larger and fuller. Do it with a friend so you can hear the difference on the other side of the bell. This is something I spent some time with as a HS student and I believe it made a big difference in my own playing. And yes, it relates to introspective practice as you have to listen to yourself and not muscle the horn into places it doesn’t want to go. Also a rather effective way to find a new horn’s tendancies.

Trumpetsplus

Not a fan of recreational (part-time) trumpet players indulging in deliberately avoiding the resonance of their instrument. I have a colleague who bends notes so often in his public warmup that he is unable to start any note in tune. Blog on this coming up in the next week or so.

Jolter

Thanks for posting this thread! I found the link very informative and it helped me with how to think about (and visualize) slotting. The discussion has been slightly less educational but only slightly so.

One thing that bugs me about the article is that if you come at it from a scientific (or in my case, engineering) perspective, that figure is extremely confusing at first. Only after a while did I understand what it was supposed to illustrate: how the Y axis means pitch, yet the orange surface area indicates the amount of overtones. To an engineer, those two values do not belong in the same diagram...

@Trumpetsplus said in Tone Centering for Trumpet (Centering & Tuning) Part III:

Not a fan of recreational (part-time) trumpet players indulging in deliberately avoiding the resonance of their instrument. I have a colleague who bends notes so often in his public warmup that he is unable to start any note in tune. Blog on this coming up in the next week or so.

I think I saw an interview (old stuff, 80's) with Håkan Hardenberger where he describes doing severe pitch bends (downward) as part of his practice routine. I don't recall if it was part of the warmup or not, but I think it was supposed to help with embouchure development somehow. I've only seen one or two people doing it, in person, but there seems to be some sort of "method" to it.

grune

Re Mr. Adams. I find these articles to be so off base, I don’t know where to begin to comment. Maybe start with the nomenclature?

OVERTONES

The assertion is more overtones lead to better sound. This is false.

An overtone has 2 components; the harmonic and inharmonic.
a/ An harmonic is an integer multiple of the fundamental. Example: an harmonic of C is G.
b/ An inharmonic is non-integer multiple of the fundamental. Example: an inharmonic of C is C#.

Why is this important? Simplistically, an harmonic will increase the tonal quality of the instrument. The inharmonic interferes with the fundamental, reducing the tonal quality of the instrument.

We want harmonics.

Every vibration that any instrument turns into a tone for our ears has an harmonic. This is basic physics. The question is: can we hear the harmonics? If we can, the common descriptor is “rich”. If we hear fewer harmonics, the common descriptor is “focussed”. If we hear the inharmonics, the descriptor is “poor”.

To hear this for yourselves, listen carefully to this excellent trumpeter at this link: two identical trumpets but for the bells, with two distinct tonal qualities. [play on a good sound system!]
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Why these horns sound different? Answer: harmonics. The brass bell produces very audible harmonics, which create a rich tone; but some will say this horn has less projection. The copper bell produces less audible harmonics, which our ears pick up as a more focused tone; which some will say this horn has more ‘core’ and more ‘projection’.

RESONANCE

The assertion is trumpets have resonance. This is false.

Resonance describes the phenomena of amplification that occurs when the frequency of a periodically applied force is in harmonic proportion to a natural frequency of the system on which it acts. The term resonance (from Latin resonantia, 'echo', from resonare, 'resound') originates from the field of acoustics, particularly observed in musical instruments, e.g., when strings started to vibrate and to produce sound without direct excitation by the player.

The effect of resonance is to amplify sound. This requires 2 or more sources of vibrations, in harmony. It means the wave of source 2 is added to source 1, in perfect cycle, so to combine the energy of the 2 waves, and thus increase the amplitude.

Ask any violinist about a ‘wolf tone’. These are tones that mysteriously appear when an open string is played, usually the A string. Sound on a violin has 3 vibrating sources: the strings, the air inside the violin, and the wood. Too often, these sources combine to create resonance, which produces a louder A string than desired, for the duration of the note played. This produces a very unnatural sounding tone that is very audible. For this reason, violinists will go to extreme contortions to avoid this: they avoid resonance!

On a trumpet, how is it possible that a trumpet has 2 sources of vibrations, and in perfect cycle, and can be added perfectly? Have you ever encountered a time when somehow a G note is mysteriously louder with no additional effort from you?

Resonance requires a closed structure. Trumpets are not closed. For trumpets, this means a closed room. And, the acoustics of that room must be conducive to resonance. To prove this, simply play outdoors, and tell me how ‘resonant’ is your sound.

No trumpet can be resonant. It’s impossible.

AMPLIFICATION

The assertion is trumpets amplify sound. This is false.

Frankly, this a weird assertion. Amplification means the output is greater than the input. To increase anything, something must be added. For sound, the only factor is pressure. To increase pressure, more energy is required.

The term, amplification, is derived from the science of electronics. Typically, a weak analogue signal is fed into a circuit, which increases the power of that signal. This requires an additional source of energy. For audio amplifiers, that energy comes from the power supply: ie a battery or the power mains. If no additional power is added, no amplification is possible.

Tell me, does a trumpet have a power supply? How does a trumpet add more energy? How can a trumpet add pressure [in fact, trumpets decrease pressure]? It cannot.

Trumpets are not amplifiers.

EFFICIENCY

Frankly, I cannot define his assertion, but Adams tosses ‘efficiency’ into his mix quite frequently.

Efficiency is a ratio: the ratio of outputs to inputs. The quotient can never exceed ‘1’: because the principle of energy conservation means outputs can never exceed inputs (2÷2=1).

In a prior post, I explain the factors of sound and trumpet.
a/ Sound requires 2 factors: pressure and frequency (because our ears respond to these, only)
b/ A trumpet is an open-ended, conical tube. The pressure applied at the small end [mouthpiece] is drastically reduced at the large end [the bell]. The ‘smoke test’ demonstrates this visually and very clearly. Virtually no air flows through. Therefore, the trumpet is inherently inefficient.

To improve a trumpet’s efficiency, the output must increase. This means reduced volume and proportions. But doing so would ruin a trumpet’s tone and sound. All we can hope for is that one trumpet can magically produce slightly more output pressure than another trumpet. But each trumpet is static: ie fixed in volume and proportions, which the trumpeter cannot magically change via inputs alone. Thus, we must do with whatever inherent qualities any particular trumpet may have.

A trumpet has an extremely low efficiency. No trumpeter can increase this without physically altering the instrument.

THEREFORE:
a/ as the maths and smoke test demonstrate a trumpet’s extreme level of inefficiency;
b/ as our ears require pressure to hear sound, and increased amplitude requires increased pressure;
c/ as no trumpet can add energy to increase [amplify] pressure;
d/ as resonance requires 2 sources of vibrations and a closed structure;
e/ as no trumpet has 2 vibrating sources and a closed structure;

can anyone tell me what Mr Adams is talking about?

Vulgano Brother

It seems to me that tuning to the resonant center is just another way of saying "playing out of tune."

Trumpetsplus

Early record players managed to change a tiny squeak into a room filling sound by means of a passive horn. No extra energy added.

Trumpets resonate at the frequency of their harmonics. If there is no resonance we would easily be playing full sounding glissandos and never need valves - think Kazoo.

A Former User

Hi grune,
Instead of hitting the stacks to debate with you and not trying to come across as too prosecutorial , I decided to do a small Internet search since your statements are bold and without citation. You state that "the room must be conducive to resonance". I would also suggest that a trumpet probably isn't very resonant under the sea, in deep space or in the middle of a volcano but in a shower? Wow!
You stated in the section, 2 RESONANCE
"The assertion is trumpets have resonance. This is false".
According to The University of New South Wales (UNSW) School of Physics,
" The shape of the trumpet is so designed so that the second and all higher resonances have risen so that they have frequencies in the ratios 2:3:4:5 etc. In other words, the resonances are a complete harmonic series, except for the fundamental. The lowest resonance of the trumpet is not a member of this series. Further, it is weak and rather difficult to play. Instead, however, good players can play the pedal note, whose fundamental frequency does not correspond to a resonance of the instrument! Further, the spectrum of a pedal note has hardly any power at the fundamental frequency. (We show this quantitatively below in Frequency response and acoustic impedance.)
What happens here is that the higher resonances (2f, 3f, 4f etc) combine to help the lips establish a nonlinear vibration at the frequency of the missing fundamental f. (Technically, this is the process that physicists and engineers call mode locking, and is an effect characteristic of nonlinear oscillators. When oscillations at two frequencies f1 and f2 are input to an non-linear system, they produce what we call sum and difference terms: vibration components with a range of frequencies including f1 + f2 and f1 − f2. In the pedal note vibration, there are lots of vibration components whose difference is f: any two adjacent resonances have that difference.)
http://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/brassacoustics.html#natural
Publication List;
*Boutin, H., Smith, J., Fletcher, N. and Wolfe, J. (2015) "Relationships between pressure, flow, lip motion, and upstream and downstream impedances for the trombone" J. Acoust. Soc. America. 137, 1195-1209. Copyright (2015) *Acoustical Society of America. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the *Acoustical Society of America. The preceeding article appeared in (JASA 137, 1195-1209) and may be found at (J. Acoust. Soc. America).
*Wolfe, J., Tarnopolsky, A.Z., Fletcher, N.H., Hollenberg, L.C.L. and Smith, J. (2003) "Some effects of the player's vocal tract and tongue on wind instrument sound". Proc. Stockholm Music Acoustics Conference (SMAC 03), (R. Bresin, ed) Stockholm, Sweden. 307-310.
*Wolfe, J., Chen, J.M. and Smith, J. (2010) "The acoustics of wind instruments – and of the musicians who play them" Int. Cong. Acoustics, Sydney, 2010. M. Burgess, editor. (Plenary lecture)
*Chen, J.M., Smith J. and Wolfe, J. (2012)"Do trumpet players tune resonances of the vocal tract?" J. Acoust. Soc. America. 131, 722-727. Copyright (2015) *Acoustical Society of America. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the Acoustical Society of America.
*Chen, J.M., Smith J. and Wolfe, J. (2014) "The effect of nearby timpani strokes on horn playing" J. Acoust. Soc. America. 135, 472-478. Details.
For further reading about , we recommend
*A technical reference: The Physics of Musical Instruments by N.H. Fletcher and T.D. Rossing (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1998).

The Physics Department at UNSW has no problem using the words trumpet and resonance in the same sentence. That aside, does any of this scientific back and forth help kids (of all ages) develop a better sound which by the way, is the purpose of the topic? No!
If anything, they'll run from the post like a scalded dog and miss out on an easy, effective, and efficient way to get a fuller, richer sound on their trumpet.

Dr GO

@Dr-Mark said in Tone Centering for Trumpet (Centering & Tuning) Part III:
...I would also suggest that a trumpet probably isn't very resonant under the sea,..

That depends. Are you referring to the double hi-seas?

grune

@Dr-Mark

I expected my points would garner some attention. Without providing a resume to "toot my own horn", I am equal academically to the scientists at UNSW; and have my own research, as an academic and player. Their research and your response are respected.

Allow me to quote from that research: "the resonances are a complete harmonic series, except for the fundamental". I need to see the research before commenting further. But, if you consider my post, have I not emphasised the importance of harmonics?

The problem I have with the research cited is this: a trumpet cannot alone create two sources of audible vibrations that combine in perfect sync. The trumpet valves channel air to the correct tube/s, and in the process close off all other tubes. Thus, the chance of a secondary wave forming in an other tube is impossible. Thus, resonance is impossible. Harmonics are possible.

To the topic of teaching "kids", young and old, how to attain full sound, I agree with you entirely: the science above and the article by Mr Adams would turn away all but the most intrepid. And THAT is one purpose of my posts.

For my own students, in 5 minutes I teach them sound is a combination of frequency and pressure. So simple. I teach them frequency is produced by vibrations from our lips. Lips need air flow to vibrate. The air comes from our lungs. By exhaling gently or strongly we create a volume and movement of air. When that air is channelled into the mouthpiece, we create low and high pressures. The combination of pressure and frequency enters the trumpet, and the trumpet mechanically produces an audible sound. The art of trumpet playing is to control the pressure and frequency, which require we control our bodies. If we constrict or strain our bodies, the sound is likewise. Thus the beauty of sound comes from within us. This is the meaning of "soul". And this is why I say the trumpet is an intimate instrument.

A Former User

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