Talk:Trumpet

Fingering: doubts about "variance" column in the table

Leaving aside the lack of references, I have doubts about the "variance" column reflecting reality. Given that a trumpet, in acoustic terms, is effectively a tube open at the bell and closed at the mouthpiece's rim by the player's embouchure, it resonates only at odd harmonics. The flare of the bell and the cup of the mouthpiece are responsible for altering the physical placement of loops and nodes in any given standing wave, making the pitches of the available partials resemble the full series, including even-numbered harmonics. With that in mind, the intonation of any given sounding note depends on the geometry of the individual instrument, and can only be approximated by a theoretical calculation involving tube length. See Brass instrument (lip reed) acoustics: an introduction

If the entries in the "variance" column are the result of an idealized theoretical model, they cannot accurately reflect the distribution of intonation quirks of individual instruments from different manufacturers.

Are there any experts with eyes on this talk page who can help straighten this out? Just plain Bill (talk) 01:43, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

I do wonder where these numbers are from; are they simply based on the lengths of the additional pieces of pipe? --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 02:56, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

I've invited Special-T to look in on this. c/p of my comment there:

An overtone series of any given brass instrument has, I believe, an interesting correspondence to the harmonic series. In summary, since the quirks depend on things like the shape of the air column and the bell flare, there is room for enough intonation variation between manufacturers (and individual horns?) that it makes little sense to tabulate the tuning of partials with a precision of cents as if they were harmonics.

To answer Jpgordon, the numbers are probably based on added lengths of tubing, but I am more concerned about the precision of the variance of any given series, for example the one on B♭. The variance of F4 is given as 2 cents, consistent with it being a just perfect fifth above the next lower partial, compared to the tempered interval. As mentioned above, I don't believe that precision is justified. Just plain Bill (talk) 20:56, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

@Mbeardwell: You might want to comment on this, since you inserted the table. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 21:04, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

I am by no means a physicist, but I have sufficient education in mathematics so a second look for another point of view would be appreciated. This table concerns theoretical, perfect values. The variance is the difference from the theoretical tone produced from certain valves pressed and the equal temperament system. This goes some way to showing which combinations of pressed valves can produce "in tune" notes corresponding to the equal temperament scale however a variance with the theoretical and another temperaments have not been calculated here. These values are useful even though each instrument will differ possibly even significantly. This table was simply added, even though incomplete in temperaments and range, to provide a starting point for a discussion of the physics of the instrument and what tones the instrument allows. User talk:mbeardwell 19:37, 06 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for responding here. My concern is that valve combinations only put the resonance of the horn within an approximation of the desired note, which does not justify tabulating pitches with a precision of cents. I am far from an expert player, but in some registers of low brass instruments, I have been able to lip notes nearly a fourth away from the target pitch of the valve or slide position. See False precision.

Another confounding factor has to do with the partials of a brass instrument not being a harmonic series, but odd-numbered overtones pushed into a semblance of it by things like the shape of the bell flare and mouthpiece cup. How well those odd overtones end up resembling a complete harmonic series varies with manufacturer, model, and individual horn.

Haven't played high brass since high school, but I know trombone players speak of loose or tight slotting, or how wide or narrow the peak of the resonances are, analogous to the Q factor used to characterize the bandwidth of a resonant electrical circuit, among other things. For brass players, that means the notes of some horns are easier to bend with air and embouchure than others. Just plain Bill (talk) 20:14, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Not sure, but it looks like the "variances" are just mathematical comparisons of each overtone's frequency with the corresponding equal-temperament pitch. So, not an assessment of a particular real trumpet. Special-T (talk) 19:54, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

That is what it looks like to me too. IMO that column adds more confusion than clarity, since the partials on a real trumpet are not harmonics as the theoretical numbers in the table imply, and the intonation of any note depends on the player's ear, air, and embouchure, not just the length of tubing. Clarifying that may need more detail than would be justified in an article whose audience may include more poets, musicians, and artists than physicists or mathematicians. Just plain Bill (talk) 22:36, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

I just changed the headings to make the "variances' column at least be less prominent visually. What I'd like to see (but don't actually know how to do) is an asterisk or footnote to "Variance" with a note below that says that the values are theoretical variances from equal temperament (is that correct?). Also, I don't see the term "partial" being defined in the section above it, which is confusing. Special-T (talk) 22:32, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm removing the "variance" table. This is not something special about trumpets; rather, this is the general condition of valved aerophones. I don't think it provides useful information to the reader; it's just a bunch of numbers, and unsourced, at that. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 23:45, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

I think it was less specific than that, even - just the mathematical variance of each overtone from equal temperament. The only useful aspect of it (IMHO) was that it showed the severely out-of-tune fingering choices, which shows why those fingerings are not used in practice. Special-T (talk) 22:15, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

That useful information is still available in the figure showing the series for each valve combination, with the worst out-of-tune notes (the 6th overtone, or 7X the fundamental frequency) being set apart with parentheses. Scanning across the image shows usable fingerings, such as first valve instead of the open horn for the note written as B flat above the staff. Just plain Bill (talk) 23:30, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

The table was a result of permuting valve combinations and provides an idea of what tones all possible valve combinations produce (in this range). I agree the trumpet doesn't require a novel area of maths to calculate these and if the Wikipedia article is not seen as a most thorough guide, as it would become unbearably long, I can understand it's removal. It is up to expert opinion of its relevance which I can't claim. Mbeardwell (talk) 09:26, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Something unclear to me

From the section "Construction":

"The pitch of the trumpet can be raised or lowered by the use of the tuning slide"

I may be wrong but I did not see any previous mention to this "tuning slide" in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:CB08:A47:2800:6C75:BAF5:955B:B867 (talk) 08:34, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Ha! Pretty much every brass instrument has a tuning slide, so it's so obvious nobody thought to mention it. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 23:41, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Range diagram

I added the range diagram that's used in the Cornet article. The "double C" in parentheses seems kind of random - there's no real top note on brass instruments. The C above the staff is often where fingering charts stop and it seems that picking any note above that as a "highest" note is pretty arbitrary. Special-T (talk) 21:10, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

I changed the "Range" section to be more accurate. I might re-do the diagrams also. Special-T (talk) 20:16, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Scope of this article

Thought I should post here too. In this discussion I was proposing an organization for trumpet articles. In summary, it's a proposal to limit the scope of this article to the valved Western brass instrument, basically just bass trumpet through piccolo trumpet and all of the various keys. Slide trumpets, cornets, etc. could go into some article Trumpet family.

I'm not sure if it would be worthwhile to have separate articles like B-flat trumpet and C trumpet. The information in those articles would be mostly duplicates. I just worry that by trying to talk about all "trumpets" in one article it leads to an inability to generalize. Plus, some classification systems basically consider all brass instruments "trumpets". Ovinus (talk) 20:37, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

@Ovinus: Hi! I'm not sure if it's entirely equivalent but I've been involved with unpicking the Types of trombone article into its various constituent articles (so far cimbasso, contrabass, bass, alto, and soprano), so that we can most likely merge it back to a table or a "Types" section of the trombone article instead. There is a similar concern about the clarinet family article being largely a duplication of the "Extended family of clarinets" section of the clarinet article. — Jon (talk) 02:57, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Range - Sounding?

Should the Range graphic at the top of the page show the SOUNDING range for a Bb trumpet as well as the written range, as is done on the piccolo page? When I first read the page, I assumed the range shown was the sounding range. I think other folk who aren't already trumpeters would also make the same mistake. Someone reading about the trumpet for the first time won't know it's a transposing instrument and check for a possible transposition (even if they know what a transposing instrument is). What is the purpose of showing the range at all? It is to show someone which (sounding) pitches an instrument can get to (which is interesting and important), or what top and bottom notes might be seen in a part (I'm not sure anyone really cares about this, except maybe musical typesetters)? I'd suggest always showing sounding ranges, as this is the most immediately useful information when reading about the instrument. And maybe not bother with written ranges at all at this point! But I guess that would need to be coordinated across multiple instrument pages and/or need an editorial discussion, which I suspect might be controversial ;-) The compromise is probably to do what's been done on the piccolo page and show both the sounding and written ranges where they differ. 90.202.97.45 (talk) 13:24, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

A couple of points. The article is not only about the Bb trumpet, so all of the sentences referring to "written" notes are accurate and clear. Also, the sentence about the lowest note with standard technique (a written F#) is not about the notation or the transposition. It's about the lowest note (on any kind of trumpet) playable without using the technique for pedal tones. - Special-T (talk) 19:09, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Well, not always - "written" has changed. Here's a quote from "Behind Bars" by Elaine Gould, page 260, which as I understand it is the modern Bible for new music typesetting: "Players are used to transposing for their instruments: consequently, parts are often written in C as a matter of course, even though the player may use a trumpet in Bb, or the smaller trumpets in D or Eb, etc. Since Bb is the universal instrument, when the range of the part is not exceptionally high or low, it is equally valid to write a part in C or Bb." I guess this primarily relates to contemporary scores, but it does mean that "written" doesn't necessarily mean transposed these days. I do agree that only a few decades ago this wasn't the case, and indeed Adler's "Study of Orchestration" (1982) suggests always writing transposed. But, there is now ambiguity here, which is normally resolved by looking at the accidentals relative the strings etc. I suspect this has mostly changed because of people working with synthesisers, or modern scoring packages, which mostly present trumpets at their sounding pitch (you press C on a synth to get a sounding C; you don't press the D key). Even Sibelius and suchlike allow transposing score to be turned on and off so you can transpose when exporting parts etc.

Sorry if I'm causing trouble - that wasn't my intent - this is a good article! But there are things in it which require you to already know about trumpet conventions before they can be read easily. Most people wanting to know the lowest note of the trumpet won't be trumpeters (who hopefully already know) and will want the actual sounding pitch. Yes, they are different on different trumpets - personally, I think that's interesting! The range on a Bb trumpet is different to the range of a C trumpet to my mind, and it would be nice to show that. Just for reference, Adler actually shows three ranges in score fragments: the range for a C trumpet, and then the written and sounding ranges for a Bb trumpet. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.202.97.45 (talk) 19:29, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

I notice that all my clarifications have all been reverted, even though I've provided references. Moderators might be interested - or not, I guess. I was just trying to improve a resource I was initially misled by. I give up - I've better things to do and I'll leave Wikipedia to sort it out. 90.202.97.45 (talk) 20:15, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

For what it's worth, this article has been annoying me for a long time and I'd like to basically rewrite it and get it re-nominated for WP:GA — Jon (talk) 02:26, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Trying to leave this alone... But just noticed the misleading stuff about odd harmonics. Where did that come from? The trumpet does not have a node at the lip end - there's a whole acoustic system there (mouthpiece and lips etc.)! [And I should add that the trumpet, unlike a clarinet, does not have a cylindrical bore.] It does not behave like a closed pipe. The statement "the instrument only naturally produces every other overtone of the harmonic series" is incorrect and confusing.

I would correct this, but I expect my changes would just get reverted.

If someone who won't get reverted wants to read up on the acoustics, I'd recommend "The Physics of Musical Instruments" by Fletcher and Rossing page 429 and on.

There are interesting things about trumpet tuning and a table could be good, although it's a big topic that might need its own page. In particular:

a) The natural harmonic series has partials that don't align with equal temperament, which can cause tuning issues depending on the key/instruments in use if not corrected, or just be unusable (e.g. the 7th harmonic).

b) The valves increase the length of the trumpet tubing, thus reducing its pitch, the valves on their own delivering approx 2, 1 or 3 semitones. However, when valves are combined, the lengths add, which is not quite the same as adding semitones (semitones go with log(1/length)). Various compromises are thus needed. Note that Bb minus 2+1+3=6 semitones takes us to the bottom of the range of a Bb trumpet, which is an E. Oh dear. I'd better stop. 90.202.97.45 (talk) 16:03, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, adding lengths of tubing is not the same as lowering the pitch a certain number of semitones in every register. The odd-numbered overtone bit is about the number of loops and nodes in the bore, not the resulting pitch. There is a pressure loop at the mouthpiece end, and a node at the bell. N.B. the bell flare means the effective tubing length varies with pitch. Of course, the mouthpiece and player's anatomy play a part too. See this UNSW page. regards, Just plain Bill (talk) 16:48, 8 May 2023 (UTC)