In this video, Brett Youens describes the specific intervals produced by depressing the valves on brass instruments, with the tuba used as an example. www.geocities.com (Transcript) Hi. Let’s talk a little more about valved brass instruments and how they work. As you know, this is a tuba, but could just as well be a trumpet, or a euphonium, or a french horn, or a flugelhorn. They all work on the same principles. We’ve talked before about how the depression of one or more of the valves lowers the pitch; today we will talk specifically about by how much you can lower that pitch. So let’s take a look at a piano keyboard. The distance between these two notes is known as a whole step, or a whole tone. And the distance between these two notes is called a half step, or a half tone. Now what’s the difference? This is the whole tone; you see that there’s an extra key between them. And here’s the half tone; there’s no extra key between them. That’s the difference. So this is a whole tone and this is a whole tone; but this is a half tone. This would also be a half tone; this would also be a half tone. Another example of a whole step would be here because you see there is a note between them. So here’s a question for you: What’s the distance between those two notes? Well, the answer is: one, two, three. That distance, or that interval is three whole tones, and there is a name for that in western music: It’s called a “three-tone”. But, of course, no one would say “three-tone”, you …
