On 30/08/2023 09:17, samarutuk wrote:
Hi Michael,
thanks a lot, this looks very, very promising! I will fine tune it a bit
more and then send it back to this list. The great thing is that you can
also adapt it for other brass instruments e.g. tuba, French horn etc. I
think the Lilypond code for my sheet music is often ugly too, and some
geeks here would probably roll their eyes. But the main thing is that it
works and the output is pretty (the music engraving is really wonderful
(has to be said), which is why I torture myself with Lilypond then and
don't always use MuseScore).
When I was thinking about it, I was going to write something that would
take the open harmonic scale. So for the trombone I'd pass "Bb," into
the function and that would tell it that Bb,, F, Bb etc are the open
notes. That then maps exactly to any other brass instrument - knowing
the pitch difference between the note of interest and the next higher
harmonic gives you the position / fingering (and alternatives by looking
at higher harmonics).
By the way, the tones of brass instruments are created by the vibrations
of the lips... which also makes playing difficult and from a certain
pitch quite exhausting.
I tell students the easiest way to learn is just blow a raspberry down
the instrument :-) so the poor tuba player is trying to blow a raspberry
with his mouth open - very tricky - while the cornet player is squeezing
his lips as tight as possible ...
The tube is the amplifier, the slide or valves
modify the tube length. It's almost like singing, with the vocal folds
vibrating, and the oral cavity and throat as the amplifier, plus the
tongue and jaw as the modifier …somewhat simplistically speaking. That's
just as a note, because a lot of people think you're just blowing air in
and pushing something 😉
I explained it to a (professional) violinist who was learning Euphonium.
He said he couldn't get to grips with how brass instruments worked so I
said think of it like a single-string violin. The harmonics are the
equivalent of you resting your finger on a fraction to play the higher
notes, and just like you move your finger up the fretboard to shorten
the string and raise the note, you press valves to lengthen the tube and
lower the note.
The lightbulb went on :-)
Cheers,
Wol
