From: Louis Rugani
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 00:11:23 -0600
Subject: [CB] 32' pipes
"Rollerball" (1977) features Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
on a great pipe organ with 32' bass, and the soundtrack is available,
though a bit late for this year's Halloween.
Regards....
Lou
~~~~~~~~~~~~~ **-=3D\/=3D-** ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The opposite of bravery is not cowardice, but conformity.
=96 Robert Anthony
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From: "Jay and Adrienne Easton"
Subject: Re: [CB] [CB Digest]
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 22:13:16 -0800
> By the way, I forgot to mention that I have the ordering
information for
> the recordings I mentioned if anyone is interested.
>
> -Gregg
I'm interested! Sounds neat!
Jay Easton
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From: "Lelia Loban"
Subject: [CB] organ recordings featuring low notes
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 07:18:24 -0500
Gregg Bailey wrote:
>On the subject of pipe organs, since they can play lower
than any other musical instrument
>if they have 32' stops...
Chuck Guzis wrote,
>>Gregg, that's technically not true. Many tuba
>>players can flutter or double-tongue their instruments
>>for some truly low-frequency notes.
>>
>>At any rate, this begs the question if an 8 Hz note is
>>really "musical" in the sense that it can be heard as a
tone.
Chuck, are you saying that tuba players can flutter as low as 8
Hz? For clarification, on a 32-foot organ rank, the lowest note
is a pedal C that's nominally 16 Hz. An 8 Hz organ note requires a
64-foot rank. I believe that there are still only two pipe organs in
the world with actual speaking ranks (real pipes) of 64 ft. pitch (the
Midmer-Losch in Atlantic City's Constitution Hall and the organ in
Sydney, Australia's Town Hall), though a few other organs have
electronic 64-ft. stops.
Lelia Loban
Defend science. Defend the truth.
Defeat superstition. Defeat lies.
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Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 09:05:52 -0800
From: "Chuck Guzis"
Subject: Re: [CB] organ recordings featuring low notes
On 11/14/2004, Lelia Loban wrote:
>Chuck, are you saying that tuba players can flutter as low as 8
Hz? For clarification, on a 32-foot organ rank, the lowest note
is a pedal C that's
>nominally 16 Hz. An 8 Hz organ note requires a 64-foot rank.
I believe that there are still only two pipe organs in the world with
actual speaking
>ranks (real pipes) of 64 ft. pitch (the Midmer-Losch in
Atlantic City's Constitution Hall and the organ in Sydney, Australia's
Town Hall), though a
>few other organs have electronic 64-ft. stops.
Sam Pilafian is one who has been known to create very low
frequency sounds on his tuba with tonguing. At this point, the
tuba's only acting as an untuned megaphone. Of course, what the
ear hears is mostly the higher-frequency components of the impulse, not
the frequency itself.
Periodically on the tuba list, there's a discussion of tuba
"pedal tones"; that is, the 28 Hz tone that can be played on a BBb
instrument, and, by using the valves, descend to almost the 16 Hz C (or
the 14 Hz BBb in the case of a 5-valved instrument). Many players
seem to take umbrage when it's pointed out that the resulting tones,
although sounding very low, have almost no energy in the fundamental
frequency--the "low" note is primarily the smoke and mirrors of upper
harmonics fooling the acoustic mind into believing that there's a low
frequency in there somewhere (a trick sometimes exploited by
organists--using a 16' and a 10 2/3' quint to give the impression of a
32' stop).
I suspect the same is also true of the contra and sub-contra
woodwinds (it certainly is true of the string double bass), but I
haven't investigated that aspect. The ear's sensitivity at very
low frequencies approaches that of a brick in any case.
Organs are a different matter since they're not limited by human
lung power nor resonator size, but I humbly submit that a 16 Hz "tone"
is probably felt as a pulsation rather than heard as any sort of
tone. I recall that Audsley, who wrote at the time of the
construction of the instrument in Centennial Hall in Sydney was quite
skeptical of the musical value of a 64 foot stop.
Cheers,
Chuck
***End of Contrabass Digest***