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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 …

In this video, Brett Youens describes the logic behind the system of valves on brass instruments, with the tuba used as an example. www.geocities.com (Transcript) Hi. Let’s look a little more at brass instruments with valves and how they work. This is a tuba, but as we know, it could just as well be a trumpet, or a euphonium, or a French horn, or a flugelhorn; they all work on the same principles. Let’s look today at the logic behind the system of fingerings. If you think about it, there are only two possible states for a valve: either depressed or not. A lot like a human, I guess. So if each of the three valves has two different possibilities – and we have two times two times two – which gives us eight possibilities. The highest note we could play is by not depressing any valve. And a little lower is pressing the baby; a little lower is pressing the daddy, and a little lower is pressing the granddaddy. Now, let’s think about this from the bottom up: If we press everything, then we get the lowest note we could. And a little higher, subtracting the baby, subtracting the daddy, subtracting the granddaddy. So this is just a mirror image of itself. And these two notes, of course, produce – again, aside from tuning issues that don’t concern us here – the same note. Now, think about the following: Every single note that a tuba or a trumpet or a flugelhorn or a French horn or a euphonium ever plays, they play it with one of these eight possibilities. So there’s not much in the …