An excellent example of the way in which intervals of the harmonic series occur in music comes from the Prologue to Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor solo, Horn and Strings.  Britten asked that the player use only natural harmonics, a simple enough task for the horn player who produces the overtones above a given fundamental by altering the vibrations of the lips.  Britten exploits certain harmonics for their tonal effect in a most masterful way.   

In bar 1 of the score we see the familiar interval of…

Pitch and intervals are so interesting. (I won’t relegate rhythm to a lesser status, just musing with pitch as all good brass whisperers do.) 

Many of the just intonation pieces I write have a different ‘tonic’ or reference pitch from each other. This makes preparing a large set up of pitches in the music software (Dorico) time consuming for each work. The issue with making a large set is deciding which pitch will be the reference and minimising the complexity of the calculation of notation symbols and…

‘Brass’ instruments that can play the 7th harmonic 

(and probably the 2^nd , 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th and 6^th)

Here’s more of my exploration of harmonics and instruments played by vibrating the lips.

For the player of a standard brass instrument, knowledge of lower harmonics from early years comes through lip slurring practice although this is done primarily for muscle flexibility and strength building rather than tuning. Few give much attention to the odd numbered harmonics beyond 3 and 5. Some will play the 7^th…

In a previous post I looked at playing 19 equal divisions of the octave on my horn with a modified stopping valve slide. My composition Epictetus The Younger uses a few pitches from the 36-division equal system. This piece is for standard B-flat trumpet and piano and can be played by French horn and piano.

The usefulness of this 36-division system is that there are 12 notes in common with a standard tuned piano. The usefulness of this for brass player is being able to play in duet with a pianist. This is…

The la-pa in China also known as the tongjiao has a range of harmonics 2 to 5 (Sachs 1964: 238). It is made of telescoped metal sections, like the Tibetan dung-chen yet is shorter. The same instrument in Taiwan is used in shadow play accompaniments. Harmonics 3 and 4 are most played, occasionally the 5^th harmonic is added.¹

Many labrosones are made of wood yet those previously discussed are played producing only one or two harmonics. Carved and fashioned from a manuka tree in New Zealand, the pūkāea…

I recently performed the compositions to observe sea and sky by Donald Bousted. He wrote it for the flute to play in 12 equal divisions of the octave (standard tuning) and the horn in 19 equal divisions of the octave. This combination worked well and I got to thinking about how close the divisions of 19 are to dividing a whole tone into 3 parts. This gives 18 divisions of the octave, basically a modified whole tone scale. I don't really want to write in whole tone scales, though of course there are only…

The contemporary music quartet LOCANA (Janine Grantham - flute; Rachel Westwood - violin; myself - horn; Matthew Farrell - cello rehearsed in Brisbane on Saturday August 18 and Sunday August 19 in preparation for the Sydney MicroFest 2 in Sydney September 22 and 23. We spent a lot of Sunday practising my composition The Wound even without the other 3 musicians who will take part (Wendy Dixon - soprano; Greg van der Struik - trombone; Edwin Diefes - tuba). Although the parts are without notation errors…

In 2017 I worked out how to play 19-equal divisions of the octave on a standard french horn which is pitched in F and B-flat. My solution was to flatten the 1st note of the scale using the right hand. I started on written F (top of the treble staff), which is concert B-flat. Bending this pitch by 63 cents and all lower octave written Fs is easy, though there is a change of tone colour.

The 2nd valve slide is lengthened enough to produce the longer semitone, below written F, of 126 cents, which is not too…

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‘Brass’ instruments that can play the 3rd harmonic and probably the 2nd also

This blog presents some more exploration of the wide range of instruments that make a sound from the vibrating lips of the player. I found the research really interesting when I did it in 2010. I'm sure there is more to discover . . .

Players of the kakaki of west Africa use a musical style with abrupt rhythms and pitch changes between the 2nd and 3rd harmonics. The interval between these harmonics is often wider than…

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Nexus between brass and strings in just intonation

Temporary conclusion: the best nexus pitch is a C.

I’ve been composing a just intonation piece for 6 horns and decided to re-write some of it for a mixed ensemble of flute, 2 horns, violin, cello, double bass and soprano. In this blog I’ll show some of the tuning detail and the issues of working with strings and brass. Most of the tuning issues will be the same when composing in equal divisions.

• 2 main tuning issues

1.Brass players and…