9 Learning & Playing Tuba/Trumpet/Euphonium/Baritone/Flugelhorn/French Horn/Cornet

In this video, Brett Youens describes the two types of alternate fingerings for valved brass instruments - "global and local" - with the tuba used as an example.

http://www.brettyouens.com/

(Transcript)
Hi. Lets talk a little more about valved brass instruments and how they work. As you can see, this is a potato, but it could just as well be a trumpet, or a flugelhorn, or a cornet, or a French horn, or a tenor Horn, or a euphonium or a baritone because all of these instruments work on the same principles. For today, lets pretend its a tuba.

The principle we want to talk about today is not potatoes and their alternate identities, but rather musical notes and their alternate fingerings. For example...As you can see, I just produced the same note with two different fingerings. This phenomenon, which is quite common on brass instruments, is called alternate fingerings. For a variety of reasons, one fingering may be preferable over another in a certain passage, so it is important, and certainly very helpful to know as many alternate fingerings as you can. Some of the reasons for using an alternate fingering may be that a certain fingering produces a pitch which is better in tune, or that a certain fingering may be easier for the fingers to play, or easier for the lips to play, or that it produces a note with a tone-quality that fits the rest of the passage.

There are two types of alternate fingerings: those that always work we might call those global and those that sometimes work - we might call those local.

The best example of a global alternate fingering is substituting valve 3 for valves 1 and 2. This will work in any range of the instrument. The reason is simple: if I depress the Dad and the Baby, then Im lowering the pitch by one and a half tones, and if I depress the Grandfather, Im also lowering the pitch by one and a half tones.

If you have a fourth valve on your instrument then there is one other global alternate fingering youll want to know about. If you press the fourth valve, its the same thing as pressing valves 1 & 3. The 4th valve lowers the pitch by 5 half steps, and valve 3 lowers it by 3 and valve 1 lowers it by 2, which also gives us 5 half steps. This also means, by the way, that instead of playing 123 I could substitute 4 for 1 & 3, meaning 24 would be a global alternate fingering for 12 & 3.

To see some examples of local alternate fingerings, lets take a look at a piano keyboard where the overtones of a trumpet in C have been marked with red beads. Lets say I want to produce this note here, which I could mark with a blue bead. I could either play that note by lowering this overtone, which I would have to do with valve 2, since thats a half step, or lowering this overtone, which I would have to lower 4 half steps, which would be valves 2 & 3, right? So here, valves 2 & 3 can be substituted for valve 2 and vice versa.

Now, lets try a different example. Lets say I wanted to produce this note here. I could either lower this overtone a half step (so valve 2) or this overtone 5 half steps, which would be valve one and valve 3, right? So here I could either use valve 2 or valves 1 & 3. So for this note here, we could use valve 2 or 2 & 3, and here we can use 2 or 1 & 3. So you see, that those are not the same, they are not global alternate fingerings, but rather local alternate fingerings.

So now you know a little bit more about valved brass instruments and how they work.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• learn
• tuba
• trumpet
• euphonium
• baritone
• flugelhorn
• cornet
• how
• to
• play
• brass
• instruments
• alternate
• fingerings
• fourth
• valve

[FrenchHornMaster3125]

2 things, helpful, thx,

And..

LOL

ROFL

[PianoWallaby]

@FrenchHornMaster3125 Glad you liked it!

[aolyahoo]

Very helpful

[PianoWallaby]

I'm glad!

[MichaelUhler]

great!~

[PianoWallaby]

Thanks for the comments!

[PandaBear3455]

What valves do you press to get a 6 note scale on my Euphonium?

[Shmior]

you almost crack up at the end of all of these

[Drag0ncl0ud]

if I could just interject here the thumb key is weird because pressing it raises the pitch from F to Bb. When you press the thumb key down, the length of the instrument is the same as a euphonium and you can play the same notes with the same fingerings. Without pressing the thumb key your horn will be in F like normal

[themouseofevil]

My Euphonium has so many intonation difficulties (it's a Willson 2950), that I use awkward alternate fingerings for notes. My mid-range A is really flat, so instead of 2nd I use 4th. And both the upper and higher register F's are incredibly sharp, so I use the 4th valve for those. For high Bb I use 1st.

The instrument is worth it for it's tone quality :-P