7.8 Going Further: The Bass Brass Instruments of Berlioz
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Fig. 7.56 Scatter plot of cup volume V cup and shape quotient Q cup for typical nineenth and
twentieth-century brasswind mouthpieces: tuba, bass trombone and euphonium, tenor trombone
and baritone saxhorn, french horns, tenor saxhorn, flugelhorn, cornet, and trumpet. To the right
hand side are the more hemispherical cup shapes, to the left the more inward-curving (cuspoidal);
those with a shape quotient of 1.0 have conical cup shapes
tubas. The musical possibilities and limitations of the trombone, serpent, ophicleide
and tuba are closely related to characteristic acoustical features of the instruments,
which are discussed in the following sections.