logoalt Hacker News

What I've learned about the trombone

55 pointsby bookofjoetoday at 10:51 AM45 commentsview on HN

Comments

bryanlarsentoday at 1:27 PM

I've been trying to square the physics and my experience.

Pedal B flat is the fundamental, low B flat is the 2x, F 3x, mid B flat the 4x, D the 5X, high F is 6X, G half sharp is 7X and high B flat is 8X.

The position your music teacher most likely will have told you to adjust is 2nd position - you play it slightly sharper for an A vs the E or C sharp it's also used for.

Why is that? It's the major 3rd that has the largest variation between just and equal temperament. The A is often a 3rd against the F, is that why?

But it seems to me that it's all the notes on the D embouchure that will be off -- 1st position D on the trombone is 5X the fundamental, so it's justly tuned, not equally tuned, so shouldn't it be the one that needs the most adjustment? I guess all wind instruments have this problem, so maybe I don't notice because usually I'm playing in a wind band with very few equally tempered instruments like piano, guitar and glockenspiel?

show 2 replies
RickJWagnertoday at 5:11 PM

There’s also a ‘trigger trombone’ variant, where pulling a trigger routes the air through more tubing, bringing a different pitch.

Source: I’m a sponsor of the trombone arts. My kid played trombone in high school.

vintermanntoday at 1:41 PM

One trombone feature not mentioned here is that the length of the pipe apparently affects the timing enough that they have to compensate for it.

show 1 reply
liotiertoday at 1:17 PM

> But, how can a trombone ever be better than the piano when there’s so many variables? Well, unlike a piano, where each key produces a fixed pitch, a trombone lets me subtly adjust every note as I play.

Thanks, but I'll stick to my keyboard's pitch bend control.

The trombone's great expressiveness comes at a steep learning cost.

show 3 replies
bluGilltoday at 1:55 PM

If you play piano you should find a tuner who does something better than equal temperament. When you accept that changing keys will change the tone of the song you can get a lot better music. You don't need to go to just temperament (and since you still need octave stretch it wouldn't be ideal anyway - though if you can live with playing music in exactly one key it is nice).

I tuned my piano to EBVTIII and I like it. (well I tuned 3 notes and then got my son interested and he tuned the rest). It isn't as hard to tune a piano as professionals make it out. However it takes me about 5x as long so if you can find a good tuner I'd call it worth it.

show 1 reply
_spduchamptoday at 1:11 PM

One of my favourite albums is Stuart Dempster's Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel.

A group of trombonists all playing in a giant underground water tank with incredibly long reverb.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=4tvMp4XDICU

frankfrank13today at 3:35 PM

I loved playing trombone in school. It's such a simple mechanism, it invites a lot of curiousity, and this piece captures that well. Instruments like piano, violin, and guitar are very visual, essentially wysiwyg. Instruments like saxophones, clarinets, flutes, take a long to mentally map and reason through (this combination of keys achieves note X). Trumpets, and other 3 valve instruments map exactly to trombone positions! Eg. no-valves = 1st position, 1st valve is 3rd position, 1+2 is 4th position. But visually you don't see this, and it doesn't invite the curiousity. Trombone super unique in that you get a little wysiwyg, but you have to square that with embouchure. But learning trombone, and then mapping that knowledge to a euphonium, trumpet, tuba, etc, gives you a knowledge about that instrument (eg ok if note X is 1st valve, and note X+1 is 1+2, then i know adding 2-to-1 adds a half step, because position 3 is a half step from position 4).

show 1 reply
Esn024today at 12:58 PM

This seems a decent introduction. The only thing mentioned that I wasn't really aware of is the effect of the tongue in addition to the lips on the embouchure of higher notes. Can anyone recommend some more info on that?

show 1 reply
dark-startoday at 12:46 PM

Everything I know about trombones I know from the game Trombone Champ.

It's a good game for every aspiring trobonist (or people just remotely interested in music-related video games)

DonHopkinstoday at 2:49 PM

Oh, by the way...

Pink Trombone

https://dood.al/pinktrombone/

https://github.com/imaginary/pink-trombone

Evy Kassirer - !!Con 2019 - Reverse engineering your mouth! by Evy Kassirer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTwjirrCuDE&t=34s

Zack Quattan - Pink Trombone Playlist - Gamepad / MIDI / Machine Learning / Phoneme Classifier / etc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LflxVULOtLs&list=PLzgiV7-SLJ...

https://deepwiki.com/zakaton/Pink-Trombone

pink trombone controlled by max msp via OSC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7eJ209ayFw

Circuit Bending - Pink Trombone "Speech Synthesis"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_qd116njyk

How to break Pink Trombone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4FWmlJPxsE

jeffbeetoday at 12:38 PM

"The trombone is the only brass instrument in a classical orchestra" is a statement that requires further support.

show 1 reply