 The Oboe BBoard
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Author: EaubeauHorn
Date: 2024-05-29 23:11
So, ok, on my Cor and on many Cors the low concert E is a bit flat. Since all the holes are closed, this pitch is basically the length of the instrument. So why don't they just shorten the instrument at the bell end whatever tiny bit is needed such that the E is in tune? What am I missing here?
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2024-05-30 16:22
Many newer cors have a low B bell vent and Marigaux have been fitting them for several decades, although those older cors have it on the lower joint and made considerably smaller to compensate. Howarth started fitting the bell vent to their XL cors when they were first launched in the late '90s. It not only raises the low B but makes it less 'blary' as the bell vent equalises or softens the tone quality of the low B.
As with oboes, shortening the bell to raise the low Bb up to pitch (calibrated to 440Hz) was done, but it caused trouble with the upper register E which is why most oboes have a low Bb bell vent which only opens for low Bb (or low B as well on others since Marigaux introduced that feature in the '80s).
Cor bells are infinitely variable in their capacity as some which may seem large aren't as hollowed out on the inside as others (Ward&Winterbourn cor bells don't have much chambering at all), even though they may be the same height and diameter. There was a time in the '80s where Howarth made some incredibly skinny cor bells, although before and since then, they have some of the largest.
But like most things, it's all trial and error as opposed to being based on mathematical calculations and what works, works and what doesn't work, doesn't work.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: EaubeauHorn
Date: 2024-05-31 05:01
Thanks, Chris. I don't think my Laubin has a vent but I wouldn't know what one looks like. I have noted that with some reeds it is not nearly as flat as with others, and I'm not a reed maker so no idea what characteristic would cause that.
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2024-05-31 14:40
Marigaux 930 cor:
https://www.howarthlondon.com/content/uploads/2022/10/MarigauxCorWeb.jpg
The bell vent has a small closed bell key that's opened only when the low B key is held down. If you have an accomplice or are able to use your knee to open/close the bell vent, then that'll make it more obvious what difference it makes to the tone quality and the tuning of low B. The bell vent can be disengaged just by unlinking it should you not want to use it.
My 1979 Marigaux d'amore also has a low B vent which is on the lower joint and can't be disengaged, but can always be closed off by plugging up the vent tonehole should you want to do that.
Howarth have since dropped using the keyed low B vent on their XL cors.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: Hotboy
Date: 2024-06-02 16:08
I have found that the bocal has a tremendous effect on low register response, pitches, and sinking. Experimentation is required to discover which bocal works best with which cor and reed combination. You also might try adding a key while playing low E...try the Eb or the B key. Even if adding a key makes the note a bit sharp, I find it is much easier to lip the note down than up....the effect of adding a key is also bocal- and make-dependent.
Dane
Bay Area, California
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Author: EaubeauHorn
Date: 2024-06-03 04:03
Thanks. I have a Laubin Cor and the Laubin bocals work the best on it. Reeds are my bugaboo and I'm lucky if I have even one I can play on. I live at altitude, have never succeeded in making my own reeds, and reeds made at or near sea level play like two popsicle sticks tied together. Also have never managed to adjust one of those; they have "gone too far another direction" to be turned around and made playable by me.
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Author: mschmidt
Date: 2024-06-03 08:07
EaubeauHorn was writing of "low concert E," i.e. fingered as a low B on cor. There aren't any keys to add, Dane. As he wrote in the original post, all holes are stopped and the relevant acoustic length is the length of the instrument.
Mike
Still an Amateur, but not really middle-aged anymore
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2024-06-03 19:05
As for the note E itself (xxx|xxo), then that's pretty much a disaster of a compromise on the majority of cors due to keywork and finger spacing as the low E tonehole (the one directly under RH3) is placed higher up the instrument than it should ideally be and made too small in diameter to bring it down to pitch, therefore resulting in a poor quality note.
The forked F vent ideally has to be arranged to remain open when E is played to help vent it and closed as soon as RH3 is held down, hence the floating rocker arrangement to the side of the RH main action. As already mentioned, using the RH Eb key will help further vent E but will sharpen it, whereas on pro medels the LH Eb key will further diminish the venting of E by closing down the split RH3 fingerplate (for the D#-E trill) while opening the Eb key.
A much simpler arrangement of the forked F vent is doable and often used on student model cors to keep the cost down (Howarth S20 through to S40C cors), although it will cause some tuning problems in the altissimo register where you'd use the low C key which should close off the forked F vent when it's held down - which is why pro level cors have the floating rocker arrangement which allows that. On these cors with this simpler F vent arrangement, the F vent remains open unless both RH fingers 2 and 3 are held down together.
The last new Rigoutat cors I've seen had a closed F vent (just like on oboes), although that was around 20 years ago since I last saw a brand new Rigoutat cor as they're not all that popular here as Loree and Howarth cors are the most popular and Marigaux cors are gathering more traction.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: Hotboy
Date: 2024-06-03 22:20
Thanks Mike, I missed the "concert" E reference.
Both the oboe and English Horn tend to be flat in the lowest note of the instrument. That's why modern oboes have a Bb resonance key and many modern EHs have a "B resonance key" installed on the EH bell. It's a big (and expensive) job to have an EH retrofitted with a bell key, but I understand that some techs can do it.
Dane
Bay Area, California
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2024-06-03 22:31
Just a note when it comes to notes, you're best referring to the written/fingered note as opposed to the concert pitch note as that applies across the board, or if you want to, add the concert pitch note in brackets after the written/fingered note. As all the other sizes of oboes are transposing instruments, the written/fingered note is the best point of reference to use for any given note.
Therefore, low B (xxx low B|xxx low C or xxx low B|xxx on instruments with a low B-C link) is low B on all instruments and low E (xxx|xxo) is low E on all instruments. Occasionally there are scores and parts for cor or d'amore written at pitch and are usually transposed at sight (eg. the d'amore parts in Holst's 'Somerset Rhapsody'), but they're few and far between and that's usually seen in some scores where everything's written at pitch.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: EaubeauHorn
Date: 2024-06-04 05:37
I read by concert pitch. Always have on many instruments. That means I read quite a few clefs, all of them in concert pitch. That is because I have what I call "pitch recognition" which others refer to as perfect pitch. It is highly confusing to me to give a note the wrong name. I started on piano with an in-tune piano and learned those pitches' names. And two clefs at the same time. I find that highly desirable in starting students, because the dot on the page refers to a pitch, not a fingering. You can play it with your nose if you want. As opposed to how many students come up through a band program, where the notes on transposing instruments have the wrong names AND are associated with a fingering and not a pitch, at least to start with. Brass players have a more complex job of finding and producing the pitch.
So what you run into with people who learned to read by fingering, is that they are resistant to learning an instrument that doesn't use the same fingering, and that's how we got the clefs in brass bands. Tuba players, the ones who aren't specifically (only) brass band players, have four sets of fingerings to learn, eventually, for the four different keys of tubas, all reading conert pitch bass clef.
That's just how I do it (and I play tuba too, as well as horn and strings) -- and I find that reading by concert pitch makes one almost infinitely flexible, able to read viola music on clarinet, clarinet music on violin -- just by not associating the dot on the page with a specific fingering but instead with a specific pitch.
End diatribe.
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2024-06-11 00:51
In UK brass bands, all the players play music in treble clef (and transposed accordingly) so they can change to a different instrument and still use the same fingerings for the written notes. From Eb soprano cornet right down to BBb bass, they all read treble clef parts.
That then causes a problem for dyed-in-the-wool brass band trombone, euphonium and tuba players when they do concert band, Big Band or orchestral playing where those instruments are normally at Concert Pitch and in bass clef. Sometimes concert band parts will have both treble clef Bb and treble clef Eb parts along with the usual Concert Pitch bass clef parts and sometimes even bass clef Bb and bass clef Eb parts for some European countries that use that system with their low brass.
At least an EEb tuba player brought up reading treble clef Eb parts can pretty much sight read Concert Pitch bass clef parts as the notes are in the same place, only they have to switch the clef and add three sharps/take three flats from the key signature and adjust any accidentals accordingly. Same applies to bari sax players who've been given a bassoon, trombone or tuba part to read from if there's no bari sax part or they're covering for a missing bassoon/trombone/tuba player.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: Hotboy
Date: 2024-06-12 09:01
All I know is that if the note on my page is on the bottom line of the staff, I'm going to recognize and play a low E using 5 fingers, no matter whether it's on oboe or English horn.
Dane
Bay Area, California
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Author: EaubeauHorn
Date: 2024-06-16 04:32
I can't do that, because on the Ehorn it's not an E. It's an A. So I read an A in the clef that Ehorn uses. Since I'm also a (french) horn player, I'm already familiar with that clef. The problem comes in when my brain gets confused as to whether I'm playing oboe or Cor, and sometimes I'll inadvertently switch clefs and try to play the concert pitch note using the wrong fingering on the instrument. It gets interesting.
I also have three keys of tubas here, and they all read bass clef. Although I "can" read treble clef Eb or Bb on them, by fingering the concert pitch notes on the instrument I happen to be holding. But ALL tuba players do that, unless they are only brass band players.
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Author: Hotboy
Date: 2024-06-16 22:14
It appears that playing many instruments in many keys and clefs can have its downside...most notably difficulty with sight reading fast or tricky passages on EH. I don't have that handicap. Playing EH feels just like playing oboe for me. My sense of pitch doesn't interfere with that.
Dane
Bay Area, California
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2024-06-19 00:13
If you put your cor in for repair and the repairer only has a written ticket from the member of staff that booked it in mentioning you're having trouble with low E, they're immediately going to check the fingered note and everything keywork and tonehole related to that note.
While having perfect pitch or relative pitch may be a blessing in some cases, it's a curse in others. Makers and repairers can't predict a small percentage of players refer to note names on their transposing instruments as the actual pitch instead of the written pitch, so they can't be held accountable for any misunderstanding.
Transposing instruments are made to give players the ease of playing instead of having to learn a completely different fingering system if they were all treated as Concert Pitch instruments. The only woodwind instruments I know of that use the Concert Pitch note naming system are recorders, only a few of them produce the actual written pitches.
And then when it comes to playing in period music ensembles at 415Hz on period instruments built to 415Hz, that too will be written at the sounding pitch calibrated to 415Hz instead of being written out a semitone lower than it sounds in relation to 440Hz.
I for one wouldn't want to have to learn a completely different fingering system for every transposing instrument I play built to Eb, D, C, Bb, A, G, F, Eb, C basso, Bb basso, A basso, EEb, CC and BBb when one fingering system can be used for the individual family of instruments built to those pitches and neither would I want to have to suffer the consequence of a misdiagnosis if I didn't treat them as anything other than the instruments they are if I was unaware they were treated any differenty by the player.
Conclusion - ALWAYS treat transposing instruments as transposing instruments and there won't be any misunderstanding.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: EaubeauHorn
Date: 2024-06-22 21:43
That is if you CAN. Those with perfect pitch cannot. Think of it this way: just the colors in the rainbow, what if you had to call them different names depending on what room you were in, and you had to remember what all those different names were? But if you have Perfect Color (which almost everyone does) then you can just let everybody else change the names of them all they want, and just keep on calling them by their real names no matter what room you happen to be in.
As for talking to repair people -- I always refer to the names they are expecting to hear. it would be just asking for trouble to not.
I took a (French) horn lesson from a well known trombonist once, and I could see him having to translate the note names in his head, to make them correct for me -- turned out he had perfect pitch, and was having to find the "correct wrong name" to converse with me, a horn player. When I told him I had perfect pitch and he could use the right names, he looked puzzled and said "but how to you read horn music then?" And when I said I simply read a different clef, I saw the light bulb go on. ALL people with perfect pitch have to do this, just like anyone who has normal color vision isn't going to go changing the names of the colors just because they are in a different room. The PP people can't do it the relative people way, and vice versa. My friends who are not PP people think I have a distinct advantage, but, as brass players, we can't just put fingers down and blow -- we have to buzz the correct pitch at the same time as we're putting the fingers down, sometimes at a pretty fast rate of speed.
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