TromboneChat

I’m making this post as a desperate attempt to find clarity on tone quality.

As I understand it, a trombone has brilliance, warmth, and core. In my head I have core as the solid fundamental of the pitch and the aspect that makes it to the back of the concert hall. Now for my confusion.

What exactly is the brilliance and warmth in the tone? I see brilliance as the edge of the sound, the bite at the beginning of the note.

Warmth I see as the “sweetness” in the tone.

However I see people describe sound differently, and I’m just generally confused as to what constitutes warmth or brilliance.

Brilliance is not only at the beginning of the note, it's what causes projection, along with the core. Warmth is what you hear close up... hopefully. It's all about balance to create a sound that is warm near you but projects, and is easy to tune to. An unbalanced sound may be lifeless, or strident, or impossible to tune.

What it really comes down to is which harmonics are emphasized more or less in the sound. If you look at a sound analysis app you can see the profile.

If you look at the fourier transform (=sound analysis) I think the warmth of the sound corresponds to the base frequency (= the frequency after which you name the note), this frequency is particularly emphasized on eg. tuba and euphonium. The core corresponds to the next few overtone frequencies, these frequencies carry probably most of the sound energy (on trombone) and help projecting the sound. What comes next are the high overtone frequency which correspond to the brilliance of the sound and makes the tone "ring", also helps with projection.

At least this is how I understand these three terms, but I'm definitely not an expert.

A tone lacking core and brilliance might be not only perceived as "warm" but somewhat dull, it doesn't cut trough, lacking the warmth might come as overly sharp and edgie and of course only having the core might not be to appealing as well, this might be perceived as flat. But of course these words do not mean to much.

I think a good sound is well balanced between all three of those and best does not lack any of those. But obviously not everything should sound the same and what makes a trombone a trombone and not a "slide euphonium" (haha whoever invented this) definitely is the emphasis on core and brilliance.