Tubulong
The tubulong is a tuned set of metal tubes. It has been used by Lou Harrison, Erv Wilson, Ivor Darreg, and Bart Hopkin, among many others.
History
The chime of metal tubes goes back at least to 1889 with the Deagan pipelaphone, later marketed as the tubaphone.[1][2] The instrument later became popular for playing music in alternative tunings, since it is relatively easy to build and tune and holds its tune very well.
Erv Wilson originally coined the term tubulon by phonetic analogy with gamelan; later this became tubulong.[3] Tubalong and tubaphone are also used, as well as various particular names for individual instruments (see recordings below).
The Interval Archive contains some photos of tubulongs.
Recordings
Lou Harrison's 1970 puppet opera Young Caesar uses two tubulongs called "soprano bells" and "tenor bells".[4] The internet archive has a recording of the 1971 premiere, followed by a radio interview with Harrison and Bill Colvig.
David Rosenthal's 1977 composition Improvisations appears on the 1979 record Professor Johnson's Astounding Sound Show. From the liner notes:
"Improvisations" was composed in 1977, shortly after I built the just-intoned tubulong, the 88 key 3½ octave instrument on which the piece is played. The tones of the tubulong are tuned to notes of harmonic series and their inversions. Each of eight rows of eleven metal alloy tubes sounds a series through and including the 15th harmonic (each is thus a transposition of an identical chord). The complete inversion of every transposition is also available on the instrument. This amounts to an enlargement of the late Harry Partch's "tonality diamond" tuning system, and the tubulong much resembles certain of his creations. Partch's original design is altered mainly by revoicing and rearrangement of tones. These changes and the tubulong's ample range increase its self-sufficiency for my purposes.
The just tuning system used here includes many intervals not practicable in our standard contemporary musical alphabet of twelve equally spaced tones to the octave. In it, there are much finer increments of pitch, and there is much potential for expressiveness by virtue of the greater power and variety of both consonance and dissonance. The limitation of this tuning by most western standards lies in its inability to achieve intricate transposition of certain musical materials, but this is not necessarily an impediment to what the ear hears as a real modulation. "Improvisations" treats the tuning as a giant mode, portions of which make up distant keys, which differ in intervallic construction, but modulate one into another, and develop the same ideas. The title of the piece may be misleading, in that it does not refer to how the piece is played, but to how it was written, and to how it should sound. "Improvisations" is completely notated, but its rhapsodic pacing and the very interpretive playing it calls for justify its name.
It is important to mention that no technical or theoretical understanding of any tuning is prerequisite to the enjoyment of this or any other music. There are no necessary obstacles to the appreciation of intonational subtlety. The listener's central involvement is not with the explanation of musical artistry, but with its effort.
—DR
Lou Harrison's score for James Broughton's 1988 short film Scattered Remains uses a tubulong as well as a retuned harpsichord.[4]
The Union Duo, Anthony Di Sanza and Todd Hammes, have a series of videos called Music with Tubes featuring a replica of Lou Harrison's Tenor Bells.
Percussionist Emil Richards had two tubulongs tuned in equal temperament, which he called pipe gamelans. There are some videos of them on YouTube:
- "Porgy and Bess" on Brass Pipe Gamelan
- A demonstration of the Brass Pipe Gamelan showing many playing techniques
- A short demonstration of the galvanized steel pipe gamelan
Acoustics
The frequency of an ideal tube goes as one over the square of its length, so making a tube twice as long lowers its pitch by two octaves. This rule applies better or worse depending on the material and construction of the tubes.[3]
If the tubes have a seam running down the inside, they produce two slightly different notes depending on where they are struck.[3] Compare the two-tone phenomenon in Bronze Age Chinese bells.[5]
References
- ↑ J.C. Deagan and J. Carroll, Musical Instrument, US Patent 408,655, 1889
- ↑ Deagan Tubaphones, The Deagan Resource
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Bart Hopkin, Tubulonia, Experimental Musical Instruments 10 #2, 1994
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Bill Alves, Rare Gems of Lou Harrison in Pasadena, California, MicroFest
- ↑ Rossing, Thomas D. Acoustics of Eastern and Western bells, old and new, Journal of the Acoustical Society of Japan (E) 10.5 (1989): 241-252.
Further reading
- Ivor Darreg, METAL TUBES AND BARS, Xenharmonic Bulletin No. 11, 1989
- Bart Hopkin, Stephen Smith's Conduit Marimbas and Glass Marimbas, Experimental Musical Instruments 2 #1, 1986
- Ivor Darreg, Letter, Experimental Musical Instruments 4 #2, 1988
- David Barnes, Don’t Sue Me, I Just Want Your Sounds, Experimental Musical Instruments 8 #4, 1993
- Blake Mitchell, Bass tubulon (Letters), Experimental Musical Instruments 9 #1, 1993
- Buzz Kimball, The 13 Tone Ensemble, Experimental Musical Instruments 9 #2, 1993
- Bill Colvig, Metallophone Construction, Experimental Musical Instruments 10 #2, 1994
- Stephan Golovnin, More Tubulonia: Conduit, Experimental Musical Instruments 10 #3, 1995
- Bart Hopkin, Fork Chimes and Everly Chimes, Experimental Musical Instruments 10 #3, 1995
- Daniel Schmidt, Tube Instruments, Experimental Musical Instruments 10 #3, 1995
- Blake Mitchell, Letters, Experimental Musical Instruments 11 #1, 1995