5 Learning & Playing Tuba/Trumpet/Euphonium/Baritone/Flugelhorn/

In this video, Brett Youens describes tuning problems and solutions associated with valved brass instruments, with the tuba used as an example.

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(Transcript)
Hi. Let's talk a little more about valved brass instruments and how they work. As you can see this is a tuba, but it could just as well be a euphonium, or a baritone, or a tenor horn, or a French horn, or a trumpet, or a flugelhorn, or a cornet. They all work on the same principles. Today we want to talk about why your valved brass instrument is only in tune if you're using your ear.

Let's take an example. Let's say I want to play this pitch, and then lower it by a whole tone. You'll remember I need to press the 1st valve in order to do that. So let's take a step back and investigate exactly why that is that the pitch was lowered by a whole tone.

Let's say my tuba is 18 feet long, approximately. And, let's say that in order to lower a pitch by a whole tone, I need to lengthen my instrument by 1/9. So, if my instrument is 18 feet long, and I need to lower it by 1/9, 1/9 of 18 feet would be 2 feet, right? So, I would need to add 2 feet to my instrument in order to play a whole tone lower. And you'll see that this first valve is about 2 feet long. So, no problems so far.

But, let's assume I'm playing a different note. How about this note, playing valves 2 and 3? Let's assume I want to lower that note by a whole tone. How do I do that? Well, the obvious answer might seem to be, well, press the 1st valve, because pressing the 1st valve lowers the pitch by a whole tone. But let's look at this a little closer. If I'm pressing the 2nd and 3rd valve, then how long is my tuba? It's not 18 feet anymore; it's maybe, let's say, 22 and a half feet, maybe. Now if I want to lower this pitch by a whole tone, then I need to add 1/9 of the length. So, 1/9 of 22 and a half is almost 2 and a half feet, and you'll remember that my 1st valve has a detour of only 2 feet. So that means, when I try to lower this pitch by a whole tone, I won't be quite lowering it enough. I would actually need 2 and a half feet, and I've only lengthened my instrument by 2 feet, right? So it should sound like this, but it will sound like this. It will be a little out of tune, it will be a little sharp because the pitch is too high, then you say sharp. If the pitch is too low, you say it is flat.

So, basically, again, aside from very specific tuning considerations that we won't get into, basically, if you're ever playing combinations of valves; so, 1 and 3, or 1, 2, and 3, or 1 and 2, etc., it could be the case that your pitch is just a little bit sharp. So, in that case, you really need to be using your ear. And in fact, every note that you play, you need to be using your ear.

But you might be asking yourself, well, if the pitch is sharp, well then, I guess there's nothing I can do about it. But there is something you can do about it. Think of the valves as the "course adjustment" on a microscope: it gets you to about the right place. The "fine adjustment" on our microscope is here: your jaw and your lips.

Here's an exercise: Take any tone, and raise it up a half step and lower it a half step without using the valves, just by using your lips. That's called "lipping a note up" or "lipping a note down". You don't need to understand exactly what it is that you're actually doing there, but, in general, if you lower your jaw just a teeny-weency bit, that makes the pitch a little bit lower, and if you raise your jaw just a little bit, that makes the pitch a little higher. So, if you do this exercise and you learn to lower and raise a pitch, then you can always correct for the imperfections of your instrument.

So, the basic thing to have in mind is: The instrument doesn't tell you how the tone is supposed to sound, and you just have to live with it, but you determine what the pitch is supposed to sound like and then you help your instrument to perform exactly that pitch, by using first the valves (the course adjustment), and then your lips (the fine adjustment).

So now you know a little bit more about tuning problems on brass valved instruments.