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In the Forum: Musical Discussions
In the Thread: Too damn loud?
Post Subject: I would score everything for trumpet if I could!Posted by rowuk on: 10/1/2014
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 Romy the Cat wrote:
Honestly, steverino, I do not think that the situation is as tragic as you believe it might be. For sure it always would be here and there some idiots-bureaucrats who would try to impose some ridicules rules including the above mentioned sound-level reduction of reparative hand motion prevention for string players. The really the those people always exist and even if they sometime do advice their stupid ideas but on a large scale everyone get that they pitch foolish and eventually their "noise" fades away. I am very much convince that no "social worker" would oblige conductors to truncate dynamics, the "social worker" for sure will be taking about it and define but those talks own existence. I might understand why rowuk is so horny about the subject. He is trumpet played and he feels that somebody harass the volume of his favorite instriment. That is a professional illness of most of trumpetists: they usually play more loud then I would like them to. OK, now I will be mercilessly beaten….


No need for a beating, trumpets are built louder because there is a market for louder. Well actually, the market is for a "thicker" trumpet sound that unfortunately masks other instruments playing in the same frequency range. The complainers think that the problem is being too loud, when it is not being able to hear themselves!

When I compare my 1938 german rotary trumpet to my 2007 american built trumpet, I have two separate use cases that are only related by the name "trumpet". The rotary trumpet is not as loud, the timbre changes greatly when playing low to high and soft to loud. The rotary "breaks up" sooner adding a lot of overtones. The deep F trumpets of Bruckners time have even more change of color. The lower notes are more rich and resonant, the middle range up to G on top of the staff are very clear and articulate and the upper register is very direct and brilliant. The biggest difference are the amount of sum and difference tones when playing in the section. With the older trumpets there is MUCH more intermodulation. For the sake of "security" of playing, the instruments used are higher pitched and with much less ability to modulate the character of the sound.

It would be incorrect to label the "historic" instruments as better or worse, playing Gershwins American in Paris or Strawinskys Firebird on a rotary trumpet would be far from optimal. Mozart, Mahler, Bruckner with a modern piston trumpet causes a lot of issues with brass section sound.

Here is a very good example of the rotary sound similar to mine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLKaFOUVP1E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myGtPMdnNME

Compare this to the same piece on a modern high pitched instrument:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqSxgSez3pI


Granted the playing style between the two is not comparable. The former being fine aged wine and the latter very cheap beer (both are very well known artists with great reputations). They can serve as good examples about the sound development in the various registers however.

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