Pedal vs Petal tones

[ChristianEtrombone]

Pedal vs Petal tones
I've seen them spelled both ways. Just interested in which one is correct. As far as I know the origin of the name comes from the foot pedals used to play the lowest notes on an organ.

[Posaunus]

It is indeed pedal.

Never heard of "petal" tones, but they sound sweet and floral.

[Burgerbob]

Petal, peddle, and other misspellings are just that.

[Neo Bri]

It might (or might not) help to think that "pedal" means "relating to the foot." Think about pedals of a bike, or better, pedals of an organ. Those are the lowest notes of the organ, and the lowest notes of brass instruments.

[harrisonreed]

Shhh, don't give the actual answer!!

[Basbasun]

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[timothy42b]

On organ, the pedal notes are usually played with the pedals (you might have a coupler. Organs i played sometimes had couplers but they were usually the wrong direction.) It doesn't imply a timbre. And there's a fundamental.

On trombone there is a distinct tone to a pedal note. I don't have a bass trombone but I assume there are notes on the bass trombone that could be played as a pedal note, or with a valve combination which would be the same pitch but not a pedal note the way i think of it. True pedal notes have little fundamental content and our brain creates the pitch from the overtone series.

[BGuttman]

On organ, the pedal notes are usually played with the pedals (you might have a coupler. Organs i played sometimes had couplers but they were usually the wrong direction.) It doesn't imply a timbre. And there's a fundamental.

On trombone there is a distinct tone to a pedal note. I don't have a bass trombone but I assume there are notes on the bass trombone that could be played as a pedal note, or with a valve combination which would be the same pitch but not a pedal note the way i think of it. True pedal notes have little fundamental content and our brain creates the pitch from the overtone series.

On a double trigger bass in Bb/F/D you can play Bb (2 lines below the staff) not as a pedal note. Yes, it has a slightly different timbre. It's way out on the slide and not all instruments have long enough slides.

We call the fundamental the "pedal note" but sometimes trumpeters call the next partial up the pedal since a true fundamental is much harder to play on a trumpet.

[timothy42b]

We call the fundamental the "pedal note" but sometimes trumpeters call the next partial up the pedal since a true fundamental is much harder to play on a trumpet.

Well, a bit nitpickey, but do you get harder than impossible? There isn't any real fundamental content when we play a pedal on trombone, it's all overtones that our brain assembles.

I think that euphonium is different and does have a fundamental pedal.

The book 37 Weeks to a Triple High C required double pedals on trumpet, though. I have a copy somewhere. (There's not much gimmicky about it, except for the title, it's a series of progressively high scales and arpeggios.)

[Finetales]

Trumpet pedals don't really exist (half-tube instrument and all that) and are stupid hard to force out of the instrument. Meanwhile, flugel pedals are stupid easy. Just how those instruments work.

French horn players routinely call the note an octave above their real fundamental (on the F side) a "pedal C". As the real pedal C is very difficult and never ever written (I've seen pedal C#s for the entire section, but NEVER a real pedal C), horn players are fine with it. Of course, the pedals on the Bb side are named properly since they're all below the "pedal" C.

[harrisonreed]

Pedal tones are just whatever the first, lowest harmonic is. There isn't an arbitrary range. A pedal Eb on alto would not be a pedal Eb on tenor with the F valve, even though it's the same pitch and frequency. You can go an octave lower on that harmonic series to the F side's fundamental partial.

[Basbasun]

Trumpet pedals don't really exist (half-tube instrument and all that) and are stupid hard to force out of the instrument. Meanwhile, flugel pedals are stupid easy. Just how those instruments work.

French horn players routinely call the note an octave above their real fundamental (on the F side) a "pedal C". As the real pedal C is very difficult and never ever written (I've seen pedal C#s for the entire section, but NEVER a real pedal C), horn players are fine with it. Of course, the pedals on the Bb side are named properly since they're all below the "pedal" C.

Hm. It was many years ago I first heard that the trumpet pedals don´t exist. Just two minutes ago I played a Bb major scale from (soundung) Bb 3 to Bb 2 (the pedal Bb) looking at my best tuner. Well, the tuner showed that Bb2 was played. The tuner was fooled?

A pedal C# for the entire section? C#0? sounding or written? I never ever heard anything like that, is it possible for you to tell me where I can find that?
A written pedal C for F horn is the same tone as our pedal F, most bass trombonists can play a pedal C a fourth lower.
That should be the same tone as pedal G on French horn? I am probably not understanding your post, I glad if you help me to understand you.

[timothy42b]

Hm. It was many years ago I first heard that the trumpet pedals don´t exist. Just two minutes ago I played a Bb major scale from (soundung) Bb 3 to Bb 2 (the pedal Bb) looking at my best tuner. Well, the tuner showed that Bb2 was played. The tuner was fooled?

Scroll down to the trumpet resonance curve here:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... umpet.html

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... rassa.html

I don't know how tuners work.

[ArbanRubank]

Pedal tones are just whatever the first, lowest harmonic is. There isn't an arbitrary range. A pedal Eb on alto would not be a pedal Eb on tenor with the F valve, even though it's the same pitch and frequency. You can go an octave lower on that harmonic series to the F side's fundamental partial.

This approaches how I think of them. To me, they aren't "pedal tones". They are a continuation of melodic and fluid notes I play in ballads from as high as I can play well to as low as I am able to play well. They are just other notes, same as high notes are just other notes. For me, they are real notes b/c it definitely feels like my horn slots them. The only note I have on my single-trigger bass that isn't a "real" note is low B and it is not very usable for me at present, so I work around it.

[Mikebmiller]

Then there are paddle tones, which are the sounds you make when you do something stupid and your daddy spanks you.

[BGuttman]

There is some science behind what makes a pedal tone.

The air column vibrating in a tube assumes an integer series of wavelengths of 1/n (n being 1, 2, 3, etc). Each time the wavelength halves the pitch goes up an octave. For a trombone in 1st position notes are Bb, Bb, F, Bb, D, F, [Ab], Bb going up. These are the first 8 allowed wavelengths from 1/1 to 1/8. The partial at 1/7 is quite flat so the note is practically unusable, which is why I put it in a bracket.

We generally refer to that first Bb as the Fundamental or Pedal tone. It's around 60 Hz.

We have reports of people playing "double pedals", about an octave below the fundamental Bb. In my opinion these notes are implied by the overtones actually being played as the player tries to achieve the 30 Hz vibration. On an instrument twice as long as a trombone the pedal is indeed 30 Hz.

You can play the 60 Hz Bb on a double trigger bass trombone on the 1/2 wavelength (2nd Partial) which is a different feel from the fundamental frequency.

[Basbasun]

Hm. It was many years ago I first heard that the trumpet pedals don´t exist. Just two minutes ago I played a Bb major scale from (soundung) Bb 3 to Bb 2 (the pedal Bb) looking at my best tuner. Well, the tuner showed that Bb2 was played. The tuner was fooled?

Scroll down to the trumpet resonance curve here:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... umpet.html

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... rassa.html

I don't know how tuners work.

The tuner show the frequency, this one also show what octave is played.
I saw this links, or similar, years ago when going to seminars about acoustics at the music department in Royal Institut of Technology, I know the theory, but the tuner messure the tones as we hear them. Strange? Well.....

[Basbasun]

I belive all (nearly?) of us know what pedal tone is for us, (very few of us know what petaltone is) we can talk to tuba players about pedal tones, but if we try to talk about pedal tones with trumpet players we got some problems. And apperently French players sometimes use the word differently. Actually I rather say Bb 1 or in Swedish contra Bb.
Anyway, the OP got the answer long ago.

[ArbanRubank]

I belive all (nearly?) of us know what pedal tone is for us, (very few of us know what petaltone is) we can talk to tuba players about pedal tones, but if we try to talk about pedal tones with trumpet players we got some problems. And apperently French players sometimes use the word differently. Actually I rather say Bb 1 or in Swedish contra Bb.
Anyway, the OP got the answer long ago.

Contra Bb seems like a very nice fit, with that particular naming convention going all the way down to contra C, at least.

[Finetales]

A pedal C# for the entire section? C#0? sounding or written? I never ever heard anything like that, is it possible for you to tell me where I can find that?

Written C#, sounding F#1. Here's a link to the exact spot! It sounds awesome. Actually, listening further, I forgot that there is a part later where 3 parts play a true pedal C!

A written pedal C for F horn is the same tone as our pedal F, most bass trombonists can play a pedal C a fourth lower.
That should be the same tone as pedal G on French horn? I am probably not understanding your post, I glad if you help me to understand you.

Our pedal C would be their pedal G, yes. There are some low horn players that can play that low but it surely hasn't been written...although I wouldn't be surprised if horn ensemble parts meant for Sarah Willis to play went down that low.

[Basbasun]

Interesting music. I never heard that before, thankyou!

[timothy42b]

I played a horn part for a musical, Beauty and the Beast, on trombone of course.

When horn in F went into bass clef it made my head hurt, I wrote a few note names on the page. One was a pedal note when played on the trombone, pedal G I think. I later talked with a horn player who said it was probably not intended that way, that horn notation was sometimes inconsistent enough to fool horn players, but he was pretty sure it should have been in the staff and not below it.

[Finetales]

I later talked with a horn player who said it was probably not intended that way, that horn notation was sometimes inconsistent enough to fool horn players, but he was pretty sure it should have been in the staff and not below it.

Bass clef for horn used to be written an octave lower than played. Horn players call it "old notation" and it's extremely common.

That said, horn pedal D (our pedal G) is an interesting one, because if the composer meant concert G2 rather than G1 and that note was isolated it would likely just be written in treble clef, 4 ledger lines under. Horn players usually prefer everything down to the low C 4 ledgers below the treble clef to be written in treble. So who knows.

[CBlair]

On the subtopic of a pedal tone, say Bb, versus an equivalent trigger note, the trigger note perhaps sounds more consistent descending from low C. I am think of the bass trombone work of (to me) unknown artist on a Patrick Williams recording/arrangement of Jive Samba. There is a quick line from low C, B, Bb, which sounds wonderful. I assume that it is played in a fluid one-direction motion. Altho I often more between pedal tones and trigger notes, in this piece, I wonder what the artist is doing here. The artist's sound is consistent and beefy. To the amateur, for me, coming back in quickly to the pedal Bb seems awkward and just sounds different than the trigger tone, while getting out to that low Bb, getting it to speak out in tune on the end of the slide is a bit tricky. Here, I rather prefer the sound of the trigger Bb to a pedal.