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)

Date format

DisillusionedBitterAndKnackered, Jpgordon This popped up on my watchlist. I did a quick scan through the history (damn, this page gets a lot of traffic!), the date format was first introduced in 2006 in this edit, using the BCE format. Spot checking, it looks like it was changed to BC at some point in 2007, and has been reasonably stable in that format ever since. I didn't see any talk page discussion about the original change. Not sure where that puts us with regard to MOS:ERA - the original change was probably inappropriate without discussion, but you could argue that 13 years of stability is probably a silent consensus to use BC/AD. Personally I don't mind which is used, no strong opinion either way, but perhaps a quick discussion might be in order? GirthSummit _(blether) 17:05, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Sure. It was changed without consensus in the first place; the first change back to BCE was a correct, albeit rather delayed, reversion to the appropriate format. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 17:44, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Fine with me: either way, in fact. I don't really have a dog in the fight other than objecting to undiscussed changes of this type. As we are now discussing it, I am happy either way. Thanks, both DBaK (talk) 20:57, 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)