Tag: celesteh

The Problems of Urban Composting

Permit me, dear reader, (if I have any), to think aloud for a moment about composting in the city. There are some problems specific to urban composters that suburban dwellers and country folk don’t have. One of these is a space limitation. Also, urban people are less likely to have gardenning tools such as pictforks or shovels. Your city resident may only have a containrer garden (if that) and no actual plot of dirt to call her own. Also, urban dwellers are more likely to have a ready supply of “wet” matter (also known as “green”) than “dry” matter (also known as “brown”). In short, the urban composter may be an apartment dweller with a small deck, no dirt lot or shovel who only has food wastes to compost.
What the is the ultimate compost bin for such a person? First of all, any compost bin on earth must be free of toxic stuff that will leach into the dirt that’s being made. This seems to rule out bins made of pressure treated lumber and some plastics, like PVC. Any bin that contains food wastes, even just carrot tops, must be rodent-proof. An ideal apartment bin would additionally be space efficient and not require a shovel of any kind. The ideal solution seems to then be worm composting. You can feed your worms all sorts of food wastes including cooked foods, afaik, and I’ve heard of some self-straining models, where removing the compost from the worms involves no more than pulling two pieces apart. Instant dirt. Takes up as little space as you want ti to. the worms are even edible. There are a few (as in one or two) cookbooks for how to eat your worms, should you get to be very hungry or decide you have an excess population. What criteria you would use for that, I don’t know.
However, worms die. Lazy people continually have to go get new worms because they dry out or go hungry for a while. I guess you could eat half of your worms before going on vacation, but that seems like an intense dedication to composting would be required. Also, all of the worm bins I’ve seen have been made of PVC. So then, what would be an ideal solution for a lazy apartment dwelling composter who doesn’t want to eat worms before travelling?
Since both space and brown matter are at a permium, the apartment bin should contain some form of brown material storge. Perhaps a hopper could be positioned over the main part of the bin so that brown matter, such as peat could be stored in there and then released into the bin via a lever or something. Also, an ideal bin would have a turning over mechanism built in. I have a PVC bin that’s round and on rollers, so that it can be turned over just by rolling it around. It’s efficient for space usage and requires no tools, although the plastic is a problem. Using a shovel to turn compost seems to have the side effect of breaking up big pieces of things. Periodically, a grapefruit will sit too long uneaten and be sent whole to the composter. Right now, this has a tendency to attract fruit flies, since the grapefruit does not get broken into little pieces. This design also is a bit hopper unfriendly, since the bin openeing and the hopper would need to be lined up before peat could be added.
Compost bins also need to sit a while before dirt can be removed. It’s necessary to have two or three bins, so one can be aging while material is being added to another. So the ideal bin would spin, would have some sort of brown matter storage, would break up big pieces of things, would, perhaps, store aging compost in addition to “active” compost (which is being added to daily) and would take up very little space. Additionally, it would be created out of non-harmful materials that ideally are somehow recycled, recyclable or both.
Ok, so this had me thinking. What if the brown matter was somehow built into the bin. I began picturing a bin made somewhat out of metal, but also out of the kind of compressed peat used for some pots. Then a hopper is no longer needed. So what you have is a big metal box, in which there is a round holder of aging compost. There is an identical round holder above this to hold active compost. It’s basically a wire frame with strong pegs sticking out the ends, at the center point, so it can rotate. The frame is light, since it’s designed to hold a heavy peat composting container. This container keeps out rodents and provides brown matter. The frame has some long spikes that stick inwards. These are designed to piece the peat. They have a dual function of holding the peat in place and breaking up large objects like whole grade fruit. The frame can split open to completely empty it and to load in a new peat frame. It also has a door on it, which must line up to a door punched in the peat, so that the uer can add new vegetables. Both the top bin and the bottom bin should be spun periodically. The bottom bin is in a box (with no top), to catch the dirt that falls out as the peat completely degrades along with the compost. The whole thing, including the bottom box, the two round frames and the mount above the box (which holds up the top round frame) is made of recycled steel. Except, of course, for the peat pieces.
Maybe it’s too big. It’s probably too expensive. buying new material every go-round may put-off some users. I’d write more about this endlessly facinating topic, but I must go do something about the dern fruitflies getting into the house again.

The IM people are getting to me

playa_fo_life53032: hey
playa_fo_life53032: asl
playa_fo_life53032: hello
playa_fo_life53032: hey
playa_fo_life53032: hello
electrogirls: hey
electrogirls: hello
electrogirls: hey
electrogirls: hey
electrogirls: hey
electrogirls: hello
electrogirls: hey
electrogirls: hi
electrogirls: hey
electrogirls: hello
electrogirls: hi
electrogirls: hi
electrogirls: hi
electrogirls: hi
electrogirls: hi
electrogirls: hey hello
electrogirls: hello
electrogirls: hey
electrogirls: saluton!
electrogirls: asl
electrogirls: hey
electrogirls: hey
electrogirls: hey
electrogirls: hello
electrogirls: hey
electrogirls: hey
electrogirls: hey
electrogirls: hey
electrogirls: hello
electrogirls: hi
electrogirls: hi
electrogirls: hi
electrogirls: hi
electrogirls: hi

Behind the times

When I was a kid, I was a big beleiver in protest. My mom always told me I was born in the wrong decade. I should have been marching in the sixties instead of being trapped in the suburbs in the eighties. I still harbor all these dated radical notions, even though I’m trying to get more postmodernist.
My queer identity is often similarly old-fashioned. Some mock me for wanting to move onto a Womyn’s Land Collective (otherwise known as a Lesbian Seperatist Commune) or liking Alix Dobkin or whatever. For this I blame my upbrigning. The Cupertino library didn’t have a single lesbian-topic book printed after 1973. I read every lesbian book in that library and absorbed all the pre-1973 notions. Also, my parents were a generation behind. They were not baby boomers. They were over thirty when you weren’t suppossed to trust anyone over thrity. They did not share identity or values with boomers, but instead looked down upon them with the disapproval of the establishment. (Although my mom did go to some hippy gathering in Golden Gate Park once. Someone there got a contact high. It gave her a terrible headache. anyway…).
On Saturday, before going to the anti-war protest (retro is in!), I helped my friend move. After getting the truck to the destination house, we were all taking a breather in the living room. Somebody brought up the topic of Miss Manners. “I love her!” said one boomer gay man. The other boomer queers concurred. They started quoting her. “‘What do you say when introduced to a so-called homosexual couple?’ ‘How do you do? How do you do?'” and “‘What is the proper way to eat potato chips?’ ‘With a spoon and a fork . . .'” (that last one is ironic, btw.)
Good lord! Gay folk of the age my mom said that I should have been all adore Miss Manners! This must be how gay men who come out and find out that everyone else loves show tunes too must feel. I think that this is not entirely randomness. Miss Manners is a voice for equal rights and feminism. That “so-called homosexual’ question and answer was published right in the midst of the struggle for gay liberation. She’s brilliant because she showed that manners are necessarily compatible with a progressive agenda. To deny rights would be rude. She is a leftist in establishment clothing. Miss Manners is a friend to the opressed and a comforter of the polite in rude times. I’ve got to go get her new book.

Celeste Hutchins
Music Application
Writing Sample 1 of 2

Political Tract

It is entirely clear that in our current system, few people other than artists enjoy their jobs so much that they would keep doing them if they didn�t have to. It is also clear that our current system is entirely unsustainable. Our primary goal in our current system is economic growth. This means we must keep making more things every year than we did the year before, over and above any population growth. And such is our system that if we fail to grow in a year, we are in a recession and many people end up out of work. Popularly, this is not seen as a shortcoming of the system, but rather as a moral failing of the individuals affected. Furthermore, the system requires the middle class to consume more and more every year. There is only so much stuff that people want to have, however, so that it is necessary to make things disposable. The only way to keep the middle classes consuming more and more is to make them throw away what they already have. This ever-rising so-called “standard of living” does not grow higher when people must work at jobs that they do not like so they can buy things to throw them away. Meanwhile, the environmental and human costs of raw materials continue to mount. For a few to live like disposable aristocracy, others must live in poverty and environmental damage and wasting of resources must mount higher and higher.

Because this kind of capitalist excess is socially and environmentally unstable and unsustainable, it will fall. The only question is how. We can sit and wait until the ocean levels rise, disastrous uncharacteristic weather patterns pummel us, and asymmetric warfare rains down upon us from all sides, or we can act now and avert carnage, extinctions and continuing genocide.

Aside from these points, the primary weakness of our system is over and under centralization. Some systems are over centralized. Other systems have no central planning whatsoever. All of these systems are setup as inefficiently as possible so that elite individuals can profit off the inefficiency and pocket the difference between dollars spent and value received.

We can build a better system. We can break away from the old one.

I foresee great changes. Americans will say no more to a system where civil rights have been whittled down to the right to chose what color car to buy. We will say no more to enslaving the third world for private profit. We will say no more to people being poisoned by pesticides, condemned to poverty and stuck toiling away our lives in stupid jobs that offer us no freedom or leisure time.

We will couple automation with sustainable development. Nobody�s time will be more valuable than anyone else�s. Production will be to fit human needs rather than capitalistic growth. Things are valuable only in so much as the benefit human lives. We will cease production of pointlessly disposable items. Durable goods will actually be durable, re-usable and recyclable. Buildings will not be knocked over for no reason. Instead of principles of capital and ownership, we will have principles of use and collectivization. People will form voluntary associations locally to meet local needs. Every home will be a squat. The residents will have the means to maintain their homes and their collective living arrangements.

Corporations will cease, with all factory production automated and run by the government. Less will be made, because less will be needed. As much as possible, items produced locally will be consumed locally.

People will brew their own beer, and their own biodiesel, and generate their own power with the solar arrays on their roofs. Yet many tools will be owned in common. Few people actually need their own vacuum cleaner. Almost no one who has one uses it everyday. Because of growth, inefficiency and systems of ownership, people currently must buy all the tools they might ever need. However, alternatives exist even now. In Berkeley, there is a tool library that residents with a library card may check out tools from. I foresee a future where many tools are owned in common by neighborhoods, blocks, buildings or associations. The interconnectedness and interdependence of all people will be clear. No one�s time will be worth more or less than anyone else�s. The currency will be measured in hours.

People will still work as teachers, as nurses, as firefighters as repair people, but fewer hours will be required. These people will have time to peruse art, sports, music, crafts, and passion. No one will be made to live in poverty for the benefit of anyone else.

This can and will come about. There is no reason to continue our unequal, disposable and militaristic social systems. Too often we resemble what is worst about human nature. There is no reason not to resemble the best. The technology we require is present. All we need is the will to make our vision happen.

in the original version, foresaw the western states suceeding. this is better writing than my tuba paper, so i’m going to use it. and the notes towards a comic opera. my music counts more than my writing. i don’t have examples of academic writing, but they’re not necessary, and anyway between this, the tawdry fiction and my statement of purpose, at least i’ll come across as somewhat literate.

More IM Converation

christopherff2002: Hello there.
electrogirls: saluton!
christopherff2002: How are you this afternoon?
electrogirls: bone!
electrogirls: kaj vi?
electrogirls: (i made new years resolution to only IM in esperanto. don’t worry, there’s a dictionary at lernu.net that you can use to translate)
electrogirls: kiel vi fartas?
christopherff2002: Lovely.
electrogirls: bona. kie vi logxas?
electrogirls: mi logxas en Kalifornio
electrogirls: mi estas 26 jara ino en Kalifornia, kaj vi?
christopherff2002: How do you use the site?
electrogirls: log in as a guest. there’s a dictionary in the top right hand corner
christopherff2002: password?
electrogirls: click on the link “click here to log in as a guest”
electrogirls: it’s on the right, at the top of the list
christopherff2002: I don’t have the time for learning all this at work, take care.
electrogirls: gxis la revido!

Artist Statement – Calarts

When I was in high school, my two loves were computer programming and tuba playing. I chose to pursue a career in programming for economic reasons, but I’ve often wondered about the tuba-playing road not taken.

I went to Mills College to study Computer Science, but I quickly found myself gravitating toward the Center for Contemporary Music. I had some limited exposure to New Music before college, thanks to an excellent community radio station, but was not aware of it other than casually listening to noise bands. What I learned at Mills changed everything I thought about sound and music creation. I studied electronic music with Maggi Payne. She taught synthesis techniques on a large Moog Modular Synthesizer. The sound and the possibilities for music making were incredible. I thought that the Moog was fantastic. I loved making music with it and the approach to sound creation that went with it. I decided to double-major in Computer Science and Electronic Music.

I learned to compose music for tape by recording source sounds, such as field recordings or interesting synthesizer patches and mixing them together, so that mixing is as much composing as finding or creating the source sounds. It shaped how I think about composing. This is still the method I use for creating almost all of my pieces. Often, there is a metaphor or idea that ties all of the source sounds together, but sometimes I just record interesting patches until I have “enough” of them. Then I look for interesting ways to mix them together. I love doing this because of the focus on pure sound, rather than algorithms or theory and also because of its tactility.

In addition to studying synthesis, I played tuba in the Contemporary Performance Ensemble and also took classes in recording techniques and computer music. I learned to program in MAX and experimented with unusual input devices, like the Nintendo Power Glove. I took all of the required classes in music history and theory and also classes in Computer Science, my other major. Those classes covered programming concepts relevant to computer music including networking and programming languages. I also took an independent study class in analog electronics, to better understand the internal workings of analog synthesizers.

My senior concert was a collaboration between another composition student and myself. We decided to have multiple pieces playing at the same time, like one of John Cage�s music circuses. I wrote three pieces of tape music and one MAX patch that ran on a laptop throughout. I also wrote five or 10 small pieces for wandering trios that played throughout the program and I assembled one small installation. My partner and I collaborated on a piece for electric guitars and vibrators. She wrote most of the trios and a percussion trio with three movements. We created a web page about this concert, with information for performers and attendees. It is still on-line at http://casaninja.com/concert/.

After graduation, I worked at a startup company that made products related to e-commerce. I did web programming and worked on their server. The company was a bit chaotic. Periodically, the management would come by and tell everyone that we were just about to have an IPO, or get more funding, or be bought by someone, in the meantime, we just had to give up a few more evenings and weekends. I did not write any music at all while I worked there, because the schedule took over all of my time.

When someone I had met at an earlier interview called to ask if I would like to go work at Netscape and have more free time and make more money, I accepted. The job was interesting and I had enough time to make music and the means to obtain equipment. I purchased a MOTM Modular synthesizer and started recording tape music and posting it to Mp3.com. I also submitted a tape to Woodstockhausen 2000, which they played. My goal was to have two careers simultaneously. I would be an engineer and a composer. It might have worked except that I was commuting 50 miles each way to work and it was starting to burn me out. I realized that music had become a hobby rather than a vocation, so I started looking for work closer to home. In 2001, I was laid off.

While I was searching for another job, I continued recording tape music and posting it to Mp3.com. I joined a group of noise music composers on the service. We thought that by working together, we could raise the profile of noise music in general while also advancing our music careers. One of these artists had a small record label and released two songs of mine on a compilation disk.

Around the same time, the Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum in San Francisco, issued a call for proposals for temporary installations that focused on sonic characteristics of the museum. I collaborated with two other people on two proposals, both of which were accepted. The first installation used piezo contact microphones attached to exhibits with moving parts. The sounds were amplified, unprocessed so that passers-by could hear the quiet sounds they would not otherwise notice. For the second piece, I wrote a MAX/MSP patch to demonstrate the resonant frequencies of a part of the building. It used the type of feedback loop that Alvin Lucier used in his piece I am Sitting in a Room.

Shortly thereafter, my domestic partner was also laid off, so I postponed my job search and we spent the summer traveling in Europe. I wrote no music while I was there, but I visited several modern art museums, and went to the Venice Biennale. I also visited an online in Germany at ZKM, a research center that her commissioned to write a paper on MP3s. I was very impressed with the facilities there and the idea of music research.

When I came home, I had hundreds of musical ideas. The first was to switch career tracks to focus on composition. I wrote several pieces of tape music, and then I decided that I wanted to write more music for live performance, so I organized a five person percussion group and wrote a couple of pieces music for them. The group performed them at an art a local artist�s gallery opening. I also did computer consulting. I was not sure how to pull my work and aspirations together into a career.

At the same time, I started volunteering for Other Minds, a New Music nonprofit in San Francisco. I started as the driver for their festival. Shortly after that, they got possession of the KPFA music archives, featuring interviews with every important composer between 1969 and 1992. They are planning to use their library for a web radio project. I am helping them catalog their tape archive and pick out interesting tapes to submit for grant applications. I also work for them as a volunteer sound engineer and produced or helped produce several CDs used for grant applications and I gave them technical advice regarding the web radio server hardware and software.

Last spring I attended the Composing a Career Conference sponsored by the Women’s Philharmonic. Almost everyone else there had a masters degree and the presenters all assumed they were speaking to a masters-level audience. Realizing that I needed more education, I started looking into graduate programs. I also started submitting tapes to festivals and calls for scores. One of my tapes was accepted at Woodstockhausen 2002.

Tragically, shortly after the conference, while I was on my way to visit Jack Straw Productions in Seattle, my mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She had surgery and started radiation treatment. All of my music work and consulting jobs were put on hold so I could spend time helping to take care of my mom. The treatment was not helpful and she died in the middle of October.

I spent several weeks after her death re-thinking my life plans. A few weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to continue with my chosen track. I submitted a score to Jack Straw Productions for inclusion in a Trimpin installation and they accepted it. I also started pulling together applications to the graduate schools that I picked out in the spring. Your program caught my interest because of your faculty, especially Subotnic, with whom I hope to study.

At Calarts, I hope to learn more about electronic music and also about composition for live performance. I would like to learn new techniques for creating music, including computer sound generation and digital synthesis. I would also like to learn about building installations and other electronic musical tools. I hope to learn more mediums for composition. I would also like to explore more writing for traditional instruments. Calarts has a reputation for performance as well as composition and I hope to be able to work with some of the performers studying there.

After I graduate with a masters degree, I hope to find success as a freelance composer. I am also interested in doing music research at a center like STEIM, IRCAM or ZKM, or a comparable center in the United States. I know that Calarts could give me the skills and education necessary to achieve this goal. Your excellent reputation would also help my professional aspirations. I hope you will consider me for your program.

Oh yeah, that’s not exactly the same as my wesleyan one or anything…

Chicken was throwing up more than usual and she threw up blood twice in two days, so she went to the vet. The possible causes for this are:

  • She ate a ribbon and it’s irritating her stomach
  • She has an ulcer
  • She has a malignant tumor in her stomach

I think it’s an ulcer. Only Christi’s cat could possibly worry herself into having an ulcer. Anyway, so the vet took a lood sample to test for cancer cells in her bloodstream. We will get a call around 10:00 AM on the results of that. If it’s not a tumor, I think they want to xray her again or something; I can’t remember the exact order of possible future events. Anyway, she can’t have any food until we get an all-clear from the vet. Christi is worried because the cat is being friendly and that’s unusual for her. But I think it makes sense because she just went to the vet and is always friendly afterwards, because we’re not so bad compared to the evil needle-weilding people. And she’s out of food. Hungry cats are friendly cats.
Christi and I went over to Christi’s boss’ house after the vet, since he wote a letter for me. It’s a really good letter. He asked for a CD, so I gave him the CD I have on Mp3.com and another work-in-progress. Then he asked me a bunch of questions about how I got certain sounds and how to do certain FX. I’m starting to feel confident about college admissions. My writing sample is not going to matter very much unless my admission is borderline or the sample is illiterate or terrible. Still, must give them the best thing that I can.
Anyway, then we started talking about how to quickly insert track markers into audio files to burn a CD. He knows a guy who sells Pro-tools, so he called him up at home at 9:00 at night and put him on speaker phone and started asking him how to do things. The guy was totally cool about it. Tiffany saw him play last weekend at 21 Grand, so I said she had said good things about him. She said good things about the whole show and I’m sure if she knew who I am writing about, she would say good things about him in particular. How could you not have good things to say about a guy you can call at home at 9 PM and ask tech support questions? Anyway, he solved the problem and the day was saved. yay.
I hope the cat doesn’t have cancer.

Possible Wesleyan Writing Sample

Evolution, Physics and Usage of the Wagner Tuba

The evolution of the tuba in the nineteenth century begins with the ophicleide. (See fig 1) This instrument, inspired by a keyed bugle, was invented in 1817. (Baines 198) It was an improvement on the Serpent, a brass-type instrument from the end of the eighteenth century. Variants of the ophicleide remain in use today, such as the Russian bassoon. But this instrument is best remembered as an ancestor to the tuba.

Fig 1 ophicleide this picture exists on my website

After the invention of valves, brass was changed forever. Keyed instruments have weaker sounds when they keys are opened, but a valved instrument is strong on every note. After the invention and improvement in valves, the ophicleide was modified into the Bombardon (see fig2). As you can see from the picture, it still retains the ophicleide shape. Unlike the ophicleide, keyed in B flat, the majority of bombardons “are in tuba pitch F” and are “up to 145 cm. tall with valve bore reaching 18 mm.” (250) The instrument as a whole is very close in profile and shape to its predecessor.
Fig 2 a bombardon this picture exists on my website

While the bombardons were still a relatively new invention, Moritz and Wieprecht produced the first tuba. This horn was also keyed in F, and had an unusual valve arrangement. (250) Most modern tubas follow the trumpet, where the first valve lowers by a whole step, the second a half step, and the third is equal to first two added together. On the first tuba, “the 1st and 2nd valves, for the left hand, lowered by a tone and a semi tone. The three for the right hand provided: a large tone, to make an exact two tones with the 1st valve; large semitone, to make an exact tone and a half with the 1st valve; and a perfect fourth.” (250) Although some argue that this is a more useful valve arrangement, it soon was replaced with the one we are more familiar with.

The tuba, thus introduced, continues to evolve to this day. But in the nineteenth century, several people tried modifications to the tuba, with varying degrees of success, which no longer survive in regular uses. One of these people was Adolphe Sax. Sax did not primarily work on the tuba. His plan was to integrate the wildly divergent band instruments of the time into a single family of Saxhorns. These tuba-influenced instruments are narrower in bore than generally found on modern tuba. As his ideas were more of unification than modification, especially among the tenor and tuba size instruments, his changes did not significantly alter the sound or structure of the bass instrument. However, all of his changes were soon incorporated by other instrument makers into their own horns, so whatever improvements he made remain with us today, even if by a different name. (253)

Despite all this comparison between the bore of a particular horn and the “modern tuba,” there was and still is a lot of variance in layout, size and bore. Two tubas in the same key with widely differing bores would be called by the same name but have a great difference between them in timbre. With this in mind, the various re-namings and deviants of tuba seem to be of less importance. They are all variations on a theme with pretty much the same sound. Yet one mutant tuba does stand out, the Wagner tuba.

The Wagner Tuba stands out not in its legacy to modern instruments, but in the wild divergence it possessed. The Wagner tuba has several construction differences which greatly later its tone. The most immediately striking thing about the Wagner tuba is the almost complete absence of a flared bell. In fact, the instrument is completely conical, including the valves. How does this change the sound? “The [sound] waves passing down a cone without a bell have their curvature suddenly changed at the open end.” (Richardson 77) This makes the Wagner tuba less efficient at transmitting sound. It also affects the timbre. “If you give a tube a large flare you reduce the intensity of the upper partials in the note and render it more mellow.” (78) The Wagner tuba would then have a brighter sound than either the French horn or a more standard tuba.

The next major difference between a Wagner and a standard tuba is method of sound production. “They are intended to be played by French horn players using their own mouthpieces.� (Morley-Pegge) This certainly affects the tone of the instrument in a way different from other tuba-variants. “On mouthpieces of the horn type there is no flange and therefore nothing definite to form an edge-tone, hence the player is deprived of its help, with the result of a soft tone” (Richardson p 72) Therefore, we have simultaneously a bright sounding instrument with a soft tone.

While the shape of the mouthpiece is important, it is not as important as the dimensions. “The cup volume and the diameter of the constricted passage [of the mouthpiece] have significant effect upon the performance of a given mouthpiece, with the shape being a much less important variable.” (Fletcher and Rossig 369-370) The depth of the French horn mouthpiece is 44 mm (Richardson 74). The higher Wagner tuba is in approximately the same range as the horn, so this is not striking. However, the lower Wagner tuba is in the same range as a tenor trombone, which has a cup depth of 64 mm (74). The varied cup volume and constriction of the French horn mouthpiece would also give a French horn sort of sound to the instrument.

It is important not to underestimate the mouthpiece in sound generation and tone. Figure 8a shows the input impedance for a particular tube. Figure 8b shows the impedance for a particular mouthpiece. The impedance of the horn resultant when they are joined together and in figure 8c. As one can see, the mouthpiece has a profound affect on the impedance of the horn and the sound of the horn in general. The impedance, as modified by the mouthpiece, is also closely linked with the flare of the bell. (Fletcher and Rossig 372) The total sound of the Wagner tuba, therefore, will be unlike anything else in the orchestra, not like a tuba, and not like a French horn, but similar to both.

Despite these very unique characteristics, the Wagner tuba is really a hybrid between the saxhorn or tuba and the French horn. Aside from sharing mouthpieces and players with the French horn section, “in bore they are midway between the horn and the saxhorn.” (Morley-Pegge) What lead Wagner to invent a hybrid instrument? In fact, “Wagner had already begun to compose Rheingold before he included the tubas.” (Baines 263) So initially, at least, he did not even have them in mind. But in October of 1853, Wagner visited Sax. “(September 1865) A letter from the composer to King Ludwig refers to the ‘extra instruments’ which he had been scoring for in The Ring and which he had become acquainted with . . . in Paris ‘at the maker Sax, whose, invention they were.'” (64) So at least by that time, Wagner had not thought of any innovations. Necessity, however, prompted him, as he was unable to find “those ‘Sax’schen Instumente’ or even possible substitutes for them in the military bands in Munich, or in Vienna either.” (264) As he had already begun to compose for the Saxhorns at this point, he was faced with a dilemma.
When he finally had the instruments built, he used them as a quartet, with two Bb instruments and two F. When they are used in The Ring, “they are played by the second quartet of horns, horns 5 and 7 playing the B flat instruments, and 6 and 8 those in F� (Morley-Pegge) Unsurprisingly, given Wagner’s history of building his own opera house specifically for one opera, he only uses the mutant tubas in The Ring and nowhere else in his work.
Bruckner and Strauss both made some use of the Wagner tuba. Bruckner uses them in the adagio movement of his seventh symphony and also in his ninth. Strauss made use of the horns, but later revised them out. “The Tenor Tuba in Don Quixote was evidently first to have been a Wagner tuba: Strauss tells in Instrumentationslehre how several times he has written for a B flat tenor horn, and had found that as a melody instrument the ordinary Bariton (euphonium) was preferable to the ‘harsh, awkward Wagner-tubas with their demoniac [sic] sound'”(Baines 265)
Despite Strauss’ criticism, it was Bruckner’s seventh symphony that became his first commercial success, which must be attributed, at least in part, to the role of the tubas.
Wagner failed to create a consistent transposition for his instruments. “In all the parts . . . of Rheingold, they sound . . . respectively a tone and a fifth lower than written.” Yet, “In the other scores they appear in E flat and B flat, sounding a sixth and a ninth lower.” (264) He apparently though the second version would be easier for the conductor. But in yet another “exception is in the Prelude to Gotterdammerung, where they are written in B flat and F in brass-band style . . . and sound a ninth and a twelfth lower.” (264) This lack of consistency may indicate a lack of certainty on Wagner’s part about the best way to notate his new instrument.
In Das Rheingold, Wagner uses D flat major for the tonality around Valhalla, as it is suggested “as the most obvious contrasting tonality for the framing scenes . . . before Valhalla . . .” (Bailey 54) Thus, the Valhalla theme is in D flat.

Wagner scores this for his tuba quartet. This theme, as is this key are paralleled in Gotterdammerung and the tubas are again used. As Bailey sates, Wagner uses many such parallels between the two, “The appearance of D flat, then, at the beginning and end of the main action of Das Rheingold serves to define the dramatic structure of the work, but at the same time Wagner reinforced the structural parallel of this opera with Gotterdammerung by concluding that opera in D flat also. The parallel uses of D flat are reinforced by the association of the Valhalla music with that tonality-music which is scored for the special sound of the so-called ‘Wagner Tubas’ in both operas. ” (54) In fact, the first time the tubas get the melody in Das Rheingold (in the beginning of the second scene) it is a variant of the Valhalla theme in D flat major.
Bruckner makes more diverse use of the Wagner tubas in his seventh symphony, which, as stated above, undoubtedly lead to its commercial success. The second movement opens with a Wagner tuba quartet. Their part is marked hervortretend, which means �from the heart�. Bruckner uses the Wagnerian tubas in this way, primarily to carry emotion, and especially sorrow.

Bruckner dedicated that movement to Wagner because he died while Bruckner was writing it. The use of “the Master’s” weird little tubas is undoubtedly done in tribute to him. The use of sorrow in the tuba parts is then a reflection of Bruckner’s sorrow over Wagner’s death.
When he makes use of the tubas, it is in the low register and often with only minimal support from the orchestra. Their solis introduce both the first and the second theme of the movement. His tubas are scored richly and tragically.
Aside from its use by the composers mentioned above, the Wagner tuba has undergone a bit of a renaissance and is currently being used for film and television scores. Most of the other historic brass mentioned above is still here and there also. Nothing in music ever gets obsolete.

This paper sucks. Also, I no longer posses any graphs of mouthpiece impedance. How do I write around figure 8? And the bibliography is toast! arg