First and third valve slides

[ETK]

I have heard that the 3rd valve slide should extend out almost an inch when playing low C# and low F# to bring these into tune (fingered 1 2 3) especially on long tones. Is this correct? What is behind this? Is this the case for all horn brands or are some horns able to overcome this problem?

[mike ansberry]

Yes, you need to extend your "kicker" slides for almost any 1-3 or 1-2-3 valve combination pitches. They are inherently sharp on just about any trumpet because of the acoustical physics of brass instrument design. There are other notes that need to be
kicked a little as well. 2nd space A and first line E are usually sharp. Of course this all is
dependent on what part of the chord the pitch is.

Your best bet is to use your ear. Adjust as necessary. Get a tuner and work with it. They have become pretty inexpensive. However, I would be careful not to use the tuner all the time. When I was younger, I went through a period of time when I used the tuner
way too much. It messed with my mental approach to trumpet.

[ This Message was edited by: mike ansberry on 2004-04-01 09:59 ]

[Tal Katz]

Well... tuner isn't such a good thing to work with here...
Because the differences in grades in pieces.
You'll have to use your ear here.
The thing is you can play a note in tune without using the slide, for example an E on a C trumpet...
But you wont get 100% of the sound.
If you take out the 1st slide valve alittle out and play that E and you'll play it to the center you'll get 100% great
sound and tone. (I'm talking about a C trumpet here... and it's different from horn to horn...)
You'll have to use your ears here and look for the better sound.

Good Luck,
Tal Katz,
Israel

[Nonsense Eliminator]

On a lot of instruments, low F# is much less sharp than the C#, so don't assume that both notes need the same amount of slide. Many instruments tend flat below low C.

[trumpetmike]

Use your ears - if a note needs adjusting - adjust it.

I have found that the C# needs slightly more than the D, but the F# rarely needs any. Not only do most instruments seem to play that note better in tune, but the tendency for most players (especially students, which is who I deal with on a daily basis) is to push the low register further downwards than they need to. I did this a lot when I was younger - it took some very painful (at the time) lessons to get me out of the habit.

Don't be surprised if there are other notes on your trumpet that need a bit of adjusting (when you start listening carefully). On my Bb, 1st line E natural needs a bit of 1st extension. the Ab the octave above the stave is terrible, unless you play it on 3rd only, with full extension. You do what needs to be done to play in tune.

[mheffernen5]

OK, about the whole slide thing...you should slide out your 3rd valve slide when doing a lower D, and also when playing 1 & 3 D, G, B, and higher D. It's to help w/tuning

[Tom LeCompte]

ETK-

There are kind of two questions wrapped into one here. One is "why is there a need to move the slide out at all", and the second is "how much". The two are intertwined.

Suppose you were building a trumpet. The tubing is something like 54 inches long and you can play a [concert] Bb or any other open note on it. This would be musically limiting, so you decide to add a valve. We'll start with the second valve, which will lower the pitch of the horn a minor second. If you do the physics and math (and I'll spare you this), you discover that you need to add 3.39 inches of tubing to do this. And if you look at the second valve slide from a real trumpet, that seems to be about the right length.

Now you want to add the 1st valve, and by the same procedure, you discover that you need 6.98 inches, and the third valve adds 10.78 inches. So far, so good?

Some instruments have a 4th valve (flugelhorns in particular), and that needs to add 19.08" to the horn to play the D [on the horn] in tune. If you decide you only want to make this a 3 valve horn, can you play the D 1-and-3? Yes, but that adds only 10.78+6.98 = 17.76" to the horn. You need to get to 19.08, so you have to make up that 1.32 inches somehow. The way most instrument makers address this is with a ring on the 3rd valve slide that lets you extend it by 0.66 inches - that adds 0.66 to the top half of the slide and 0.66 to the bottom.

A real trumpet is a far more complicated object than the one I described in this idealization, so "0.66 inches" really means "somewhere between 1/2 an inch and an inch", but the basic principle is the same. To me, an inch seems a long way to pull out the slide - my D's need me to come out just over 1/2 an inch, and my C#'s just a little more - certainly less than 3/4's. But everyone is different, and you just have to use your ears.

This is not something that can be designed out of a horn. It's part of the fundamental physics of the instrument.

If you look carefully at the numbers I gave, you'll see that depressing the 1st and 2nd valves adds 10.37" to the horn, but you really want 10.78. So playing a note 1 and 2 should come in sharper than playing the same note 3d valve. I remember playing a Benge 2X which was a really, really nice horn, except the A above the staff was a mile sharp. Since the 2X had such a brilliant tone, everybody in the band knew it too! Playing it 3 instead of 1 and 2 solved the problem.

Also, because 3rd valve is most often used in conjunction with 1st valve, 2d valve, or both, some instrument makers make it a tad longer than it would be when played alone. This reduces the degree you need to extend 3rd valve. Here is where we get into the question of compromise in horn design. Horn makers can bring certain notes better in tune at the cost of making other notes (in certain fingerings) worse.

Cheers,

Tom

[tpetplyr]

[ETK]

That was a great explanation Tom. All of the posts above really helped me understand a lot of the things I was looking for. This will help in my playing and eventually when I buy a new horn later in the year. Hopefully many others will benefit. Thanks. E T Kournianos "Mike"