B-flat Tenor Brass: What's the Difference?
Bass trumpets. Flugabones. Trombones in various bore sizes. Baritones in various shapes and sizes. Euphoniums. There are so many different kinds of 9-foot B-flat brass instruments that broadly function in the tenor register, so how do you justify them all?
Easy: they all sound different! Admittedly sometimes the differences are small, but the differences ARE there. Each was designed for a different purpose, but how do they compare when you put them head to head? Time to find out!
What follows is a cornucopia of audio files from various 9-foot instruments that I owned or had access to long enough to sit down and record for a while. This is by no means complete yet; I have a bunch more instruments and instrument/mouthpiece combinations to record, and I will continue adding to this as I gain access to different instruments. It is a forever work in progress, but hopefully before long it will be a comprehensive archive of most of the B-flat low brass out there. I may add C and G tenor brass as well, but I’ll have to rework the excerpts to accommodate their ranges.
For now, let’s take a brief look at the instruments I’ll be demoing.
1973 King 3B tenor trombone (.508” bore)
This is my main gigging commercial tenor trombone. It is extremely versatile, equally at home knocking down buildings on a funk or salsa gig or playing in a brass quintet. I use two mouthpieces with this instrument - a Warburton 8S/4* (very shallow lead mouthpiece) and a Hammond 11M (normal-depth V-cup general purpose mouthpiece).
1979 Conn 5H tenor trombone (.500” bore)
This is an Abilene Conn 5H, which is a lightened 6H. It tends to have a bright sound with lots of core, great for pop work. It doesn’t like my Hammond 11M, so I use it only with my shallow Warburton 8S/4* (which it likes very much).
1984 King 1130 flugabone (.500” bore)
The source of the word “flugabone”, and a very good player. I’ve gigged on this a ton and its shouty sound is a great asset to have. Gotta be careful with mouthpiece choice though!
1973 Olds O-21 flugabone (.515” bore)
Another flugabone (or “marching trombone” in Olds-speak) that feels more refined and restrained than the King 1130. The better choice for classical flugabone playing (???) and jazz combo work.
Josef Lidl rotary Bb bass trumpet (~.440” bore)
A very tiny, very old-school bass trumpet that makes up for its difficulty with its piercing trumpet sound. I have yet to find an endgame mouthpiece for this instrument, so I mostly use it with my shallow lead trombone mouthpiece (Warburton 8S/4*) for the time being.
Blessing Artist M-300 marching baritone (.562” bore)
An older model of marching baritone that plays very well with a nice, colorful sound. I used this model baritone in high school marching band! This model also has a Bauerfiend valve set for some reason???
The Excerpts
I’ve prepared five contrasting excerpts to showcase the differences in all the instruments that will be playing them. (And by “prepared”, I mean “improvised on the spot when recording the first instrument”.) They are all very short, but give some good information. All instruments were recorded close-mic’d into my Cascade Fat Head ribbon microphone. I generally left intonation foibles in rather than re-taking until it was perfect, as tricky intonation is an important part of playing each instrument.
First up is a short marcato excerpt with 3 parts. I divided up the takes into 1 part solo, 3 parts (1 on a part), and 3 parts tripled (3 on a part).
Solo first:
3 parts (1 on a part, no doublings):
3 parts tripled (3 on a part) and panned to simulate a large section:
The next excerpt is a very short, softer triadic statement that starts high and ends low. As with the last excerpt, this one has 3 parts and was recorded the same 3 ways.
Solo first:
3 parts (1 on a part, no doublings):
3 parts tripled (3 on a part) and panned to simulate a large section:
The next excerpt is quick, high, and loud. 3 parts, nothing else. Very simple.
This one is a brief jazz excerpt in a typical 4-part big band trombone section style.
The last excerpt is a short 4-part chorale on the softer side. Starting with just the 4 parts, we’ll go through some fun variations later.
4 parts, no doubling:
The same stems as above, but this time drenched in some nice reverb:
This time each of the 4 parts is doubled, making for 8 total players.
Now we take the doubled parts and bring the reverb back.
Just for fun, after I finished recording the first 6 instruments, I unmuted all tracks on the chorale and exported that result too. This makes 48 players on 4 parts - 12 on a part, 2 per instrument. Just in case you ever wanted to know what a massed choir of bass trumpets, trombones, flugabones, and marching baritones sounded like.
Finally, I thought the massed chorale sounded so good that I decided to try pitch shifting the whole thing to see how it would sound in different ranges. I started by pitching down, but I was not prepared for the heavenly trumpet sound I got when I pitched up!
That’s all for now. As mentioned at the top of the post, there are still more instruments to record. At the very least, I have 4 trombones, possibly a bass trombone or 3, British baritone horn, and euphonium to add to the pile. In time!
In the mean time, if you’re interested in more comparisons, I uploaded some quick phone mic comparisons of some of these instruments on YouTube a few days ago.
