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Andrew Clark: Signalling Horn Change
Tuesday 16 September
In my working life there has never been a weekly routine, but in the last four months I have come close to it. A freelance professional musician goes where the work is, sometimes near home, sometimes staying away. Concerts can occur on any day of the week, even any hour of the day. Children’s concerts are often morning events; rehearsals and recordings can be morning, afternoon or evening; in some countries concerts are often late night affairs and touring check-ins can be very early at airports. Although there has not been any rigid timetable throughout the horn building, the usual pattern has been to work from about 9.30 – 6.30 each day, five days a week. What a luxury to eat an evening meal at home every day!
But now I must prepare to return to my previous existence, starting with rehearsals next week for Haydn’s opera L’Isola Disabitata with the New York Philomusica. At least that’s only a couple of time zones away from Alberta. I’m also organising some teaching for October at the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. I expect my students will be interested to see my newly made hand horn.
In my last week of the project I made a couple of new crooks – one for each horn, but most of the time was spent cleaning and polishing everything that I made in the last four months. I was lucky to have Katrina as a volunteer assistant polisher for one day too, or I would never have managed to deal with each piece. If I were to be critical of my work, I’m afraid that not all of the crooks, joints and horn parts have been polished to the highest of professional polishing standards, but I console myself with the thought that if they had been cleared of every single scratch or scrape mark then they would not have such an even tube wall thickness, and so be less perfect acoustically. Keith says that only years of practice will teach me how to avoid these tiny flaws.
As a little relaxation at the end of the project, on Saturday Keith took us and his family in his four wheel drive vehicle up to the top of Canoe Mountain. This is a snow-tipped peak about 70 km south of Dunster where from the summit one can see mountains in every direction, including the massive Mount Robson. Here is one view from the top, with Robson in the background partially covered by its own cloud.
Keith and Jane knew that there was a small valley with a couple of small lakes quite high up one side of this mountain where they thought the acoustic would be good for getting alphorn echoes. Alphorns were duly carried several miles to this location, only to discover that the wind was too strong on that particular day for a good play. Besides, it was pretty cold too, so we didn’t linger there for long. They hope to go back next summer with a tent in order to take advantage of the still early morning mountain air.
The only ‘gig’ I have taken part in since my last work performing in May was the opening fanfare of the Robson Valley Music Festival. This was the first test of the Sandbach hand horn. Musicians often refer to this type of open air event as a ‘muddy field date’. They aren’t always the most satisfying concerts for musicians because the acoustic is rarely beneficial to the music, it can be hard to get to the venue and driving away at the same time as the audience can often lead to long delays at bottle-neck park exits. However in Dunster, the event was readily accessible and we were playing open air instruments in the open air just for a short play, so it was really quite fun. Since we didn’t get any photos of the alphorns on Canoe Mountain, here we were back in August at the festival in Dunster.
On Sunday it was a day of packing up and saying goodbyes. Keith asked if Katrina would be willing to show her bassoon to his children. We spent a last hour at the shop polishing the last crooks before a quick duo demonstration of the hand horn with a bassoon. One can even find compositions written for this rare combination!
I spotted a couple of nails sticking out of the logs of the cabin-workshop and realised that this could be a good place to hang the instruments, especially for a final photo of the newly polished horns. Here they are minus the extra crooks. In this picture the valve horn has its Bb crooks on and the hand horn is with its F crook combination, just as they were when Keith and Jane tested them out that afternoon.
I have to say that there are several people who have made this project possible, and certainly made it more practical to carry out. Without any order of significance I’d like to express my thanks to Gus Cramer for lending his bike; Jim and Wendy Russell for lending their car and helping us remove our ‘kit’ from Dunster; Keith Berg for helping find our accommodation, for his tactful metal-work advice and use of his shop and facilities, as well as many interesting conversations; Katrina Russell for assistance and looking after many of the domestic logistics; Glenda and Bob Thompson for the use of their house and garden; and the Get a Life Fund for their generous moral and financial support. The discipline of writing up my progress for this blog has been a wonderful way of cementing in my mind each week’s achievements and learning, and it is great to have record of the time spent in this wonderful part of the world on this project.
Monday 8 September
I heard that the E.U. in its wisdom had banned the import of one of North America’s tastiest berries. After a quick web search I discovered that this wasn’t quite the truth. It was the British Food Standards Agency that banned the Saskatoon berry in 2004 as it hadn’t yet passed the safety test, and it was the E.U. that put the pressure on so that they would be allowed in Britain. Last Saturday, Katrina and I spent two and a half hours picking wild Saskatoon berries from the local hedgerow, anticipating the cooking of a large pie for supper that evening for the Bergs. I had learned that Keith, being a native of the area that these berries are named after, was partial to this Canadian speciality, and Katrina, who is a good pastry maker, was willing to bake the pie. For those unfortunate enough not to have tasted the Saskatoon berry, it looks like a dark blueberry, grows on bushes that can grow several meters high, and is a favourite food of the grizzly bear. It tastes like a cross between a blueberry and a raspberry. (Both of which also grow wild around here.) If we had been back in England just now we would probably have done something similar with blackberries, but we’ll be back just too late to pick them.
The time of year that we have spent here has given us a chance to see the changing levels of snow on the local peaks. We arrived before the end of the spring melt, then the snow gradually disappeared, leaving sharp, rocky points on the mountain tops, with just a few snow patches left on northern slopes. Now the snow is attempting to return, but each time that we awake to see a new white covering, it melts away by the next day. Eventually the tops will stay snow-covered once it gets cold enough.
At the shop it has also been getting colder, so it has often been welcome to have the chance to do some physical work and use some heat generating equipment. The crook making and experimentation has provided quite a lot of this. Each time I have needed to anneal the tube with a hot flame, then to fill the tube with bending alloy I’ve had to heat up the stove. The tube bending is quite physical work, and once the tube is bent, the alloy needs removing again on the stove. I also had to make a mandrel for the Bb alto crook from tool steel. Using a carbide cutting tool on the lathe, the steel rod is cut at high speed, coming off in spirals of thin blue ribbon. If one of these pieces of swarf flies off and lands on your polyester fleece it melts the fleece, I discovered.
To find the best match of crook to the horn I have tried out several different ways of making the crooks. Some important factors that make a difference are the cut off point at the narrow end; the rate of expansion of the tube diameter; and how long it is, necessitating different degrees of ‘pull’ on the tuning slide. I have ended up with two Bb crooks, two A crooks, two G crooks and four couplers made to lengths that I calculate will give me all the keys I need from G down to Bb Basso. Here they all are:
In the top left of the picture are three crooks very similar to three in the bottom left. These are the Bb, A and G crooks. (The shiny ones were polished by Katrina and I have to get around to doing the rest.) Those familiar with natural horn crooks might be surprised to see that the shortest of these, the Bb crook is just a straight shank. The reason for this is that the corpus, or body of this horn is in fact rather longer than many other natural horns that one can see being played these days. To create the right length for each key the crooks are shorter than those made by several other horn makers who use a shorter corpus. This is how the original is in the Edinburgh University Collection of Musical Instruments. In the nineteenth century there was no standardisation of corpus wrap and length. The only thing that stays the same is the length of crook plus the length of corpus for the key, i.e. 274 cm of tube will always give Bb alto (give or take minor differences for player and mouthpiece).
On the right are the couplers which are inserted between the ‘master’ crooks and the corpus to give all the other keys. Sometimes just one coupler is needed, sometimes more than one. In the picture below I have combined all four couplers with the G crook to give the length required for Bb Basso: twice as long a horn as when using just the Bb alto shank, and one octave lower.
Clearly the horn is almost finished, and I’m excited by the prospect of playing it at the next opportunity – probably at the Jerusalem Early Music Festival in October, then in three concerts with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in November in England. In the top left corner of the picture (by luck!) is a photo of the original Sandbach horn.
In my last week of the project I need to make one more tuning slide to allow this horn to play at lower Classical tuning pitches – this horn seems to play at modern pitch by following the original lengths. I expected this from the start, and will add 7 cm of tube length to the next tuning slide. This would not of itself be enough to lower the pitch by 10Hz in every key, but by substituting different couplers at the lower pitch I expect it to work. Then I have to do a lot of cleaning up and polishing.
Somehow I have to think of a way to express my gratitude to Keith Berg for helping me through all the horn building at his workshop during a busy period for him. He is halfway through building a new house, organising contractors to arrive on schedule to build, plumb and wire. He had to grieve for the loss of a beloved older brother and help organise his estate in June. He has also made a horn over the summer whilst I’ve been here. He’s advised me on tube bending; bell bending; soldering; polishing and finishing; tool making; lathe work; and we’ve had many fruitful discussions on horn making, design and playing. I hope that over time we can collaborate towards further interesting horn projects, hopefully including my valve design if one of us can obtain a milling machine. Perhaps that can go some way towards returning the favour.
Saturday 23 August
Lightning never strikes twice in the same place, so they say. But last week we saw it spectacularly hit three times on the same mountainside opposite our house, a forest tree exploding into flames each time, glowing red for five to ten minutes in the dark before the rain put it out. Mountain weather is demonstrably different to that of other locations. Despite the wet stormy weather of the past few days, my bicycle ride to the horn shop has continued each day with only one mishap in three months. On Monday the mud drive to the shop was slick with silty, clay-like run-off, and I found that even with the fat mountain-bike tyres, I lost my wheels turning the last corner whilst trying to avoid a large puddle. I fell off into the grassy verge, but no damage was done. Luckily that was not one of the days I was carrying a horn in my soft gig-bag.
On Friday evening though, I was obliged to bring back, by bicycle, my three-quarters made hand horn in the gig-bag, in order to use it to perform an opening fanfare at the Robson Valley Folk Music Festival in Dunster. Keith and Jane Berg brought their alphorns, and to make up a trio I had to use a horn of the same length (but coiled up) to play in the same key. I had thought to use the “Strauss” horn, but that afternoon Keith and I had tried to repair the valve springs and had not had time to finish the job. It appears that what happened is this: the clock-sprung valve levers (which I had taken off an old damaged horn in anticipation of a project such as this) having not been used in many decades until now, just couldn’t take the strain of being used again. First the second valve lever spring broke, then the first valve spring suddenly weakened. In order to use the horn for the fanfares, I either had to spring it with elastic bands or fix it. Together, Keith and I tried to fix it on Friday afternoon, but the cylinders which contain the springs could not be forced open in the two hours we spent on the job. We’ll try again next week. Luckily I was able to make the Sandbach model playable in time for the fanfares.
The evolution of the hand horn this week has progressed from it being a coiled bell, to adding the next sections of coiled tube, to making the tuning slide and soldering on the crook receiver tenon. Here it is with the section that leads into the bell from the tuning slide. In the background is one of the technical drawings from Edinburgh University. The ferrule to join these two sections is in the middle of the hoop.
The curved section of tube above (not the bell!) is wider on the right hand side, and gets smaller towards the other end where the tuning slide leg will be attached. I had to make this section twice because the first attempt didn’t work out in the process of making the cylindrical tube into a conical one. Not having made this section before, I thought the easiest way to make it would be to shrink down cylindrical tube onto the mandrel, leaving the narrow end at the right bore size for the tuning slide. This is done by forcing the tube through draw rings with the mandrel inside the tube. Then the steps left behind by the rings are removed by forcing the stepped tubing on the mandrel through a hole in soft metal. The mandrel I was using had a narrower end than the bore diameter at which I wanted the cone to finish. Unfortunately the soft metal shrunk my tube to a narrower diameter than intended, so I had to open it up again using dent balls. This should have worked well enough, but despite regular annealing, the tube split just as I was forcing through the last dent ball. On my second attempt I decided to start with narrower tube and widen the end until it met the required diameter to meet the bell section. Using the same mandrel as before, this worked much better, so then I could re-anneal the tube, fill it with bending alloy and bend it to the required shape – that of the inside of the curved bell section. Here it is soldered together, looking artistic on a tree stump plinth outside the shop.
The other sections of tubing were a little easier to deal with, being made of cylindrical tube of the right dimension. These were soldered into position with only minimal adjustment, so that I was left with a roughly finished horn that still requires some braces to make it strong enough to withstand everyday use. It also needs a good clean and a polish. Here it is with some crooks I brought from home, ready to test.
In the background you can see the same mountainside where lightning struck the trees earlier in the week. The flowers and orchard are courtesy of our green-fingered landlady, Glenda.
So the horn has already had its public debut (all five minutes of it!) despite not being quite finished yet. There I was performing on a horn that hadn’t been tested for more than twenty minutes in front of an open-air fee-paying audience. I was delighted with how well it worked. Unfortunately I was not a fee-paid performer on this occasion! I will be making my own crooks for this horn, but using crooks from my Halstead – Webb hand horn it felt really good to play. My task for next week will be to make the crooks and couplers.
Sunday 10 August
After solving the problem of the wolf-note last week, I have notched up a couple of ‘firsts’ in my wildlife spotting – I’ve seen my first moose and my first grizzly bear. The moose was a young one just grazing at the side of the highway last Sunday evening. We were on our way back from a restaurant in McBride with the two horn players from Prince George who had come down to Dunster to play horn ensemble music with Jane, Keith and myself. In this area if you notice a vehicle in front inexplicably slowing down on the main road and pulling over to the hard shoulder, it is probably because there is an interesting animal in the verge grazing on grass or berries, and this is exactly what happened. Hands were pointing out of the window of the car in front so we looked in that direction and saw this brown creature with a very long nose and legs to match. No antlers yet on that one.
I didn’t immediately recognize the grizzly bear as such because I am not an expert on these matters. What I realized, as I looked out of the main window of the Berg Horns shop at midday on Friday, was that there was a young bear ambling past with a light brown stripe along its spine. All the previous ones I had seen had been black, whereas this one was dark brown on its legs, getting lighter towards its hackles. I thought it was young because it was about two thirds of the size of the black bears I had seen earlier this summer. I tried to phone Keith as I was expecting him to arrive at the shop quite soon and I didn’t want him to be surprised by it. He arrived shortly (safely by car) and although we could hear some crashing around in the undergrowth we didn’t catch another glimpse of it. He asked me if the bear’s snout was smoothly curved or if it was more pronounced with a ridge near the eyes like a teddy bear. I realized that it was the latter, so that identified it as a grizzly.
I’m afraid that the camera was not at the ready on either of these occasions, but in honour of the majority of the photographs that have so far appeared on this blog, here (left) is the owner of the excellent camera that was used, Mr. Keith Berg, using his camera.
When he arrived, I had just finished rigging up some sheets of aluminium around his water tank which is used to cool the brass that has been heated. We wanted to make the tank taller so that the longer bell section of the hand horn could be immersed. I stuck the aluminium to the plastic tank by duct tape as this was meant to be a temporary arrangement. All that was needed was to pour some extra water in to see if it was water-tight. Immediately we heard a dripping noise from the back of the tank. Quickly, Keith fixed some screws through the aluminium into the tank to attempt to halt the flow, but it only continued. This method was not going to work. I pulled off the tape and sheeting and we considered our options. Despite some misgivings we decided to proceed with cooling the long bell by splashing its top section above the tank with water from beneath. Then we had to see if it would bend properly.
To make sure that the narrow end of the tube would pass the bell on the way around the curve I bent this end first so that it looked like a shepherd’s crook. (Note: must check etymology of ‘crook’!) You may notice through this series of photos that it was hot work – bending, checking against the template, bending some more, hammering, and finally getting close to a good horn shape. Meanwhile the wood stove was heating up water ready to immerse the bent bell and remove the bending alloy (which melts in hot water). The overalls had to come off even if I did get some soot on my shirt!
From the photos it looks like it just takes a few minutes of work to make this section, but in fact it was most of a day’s work, and there was some preparation before the bending could begin too. There were some funny shaped horns along the way…
There may still be some minor corrections that I want to make to the “Strauss” horn, not particularly as a result of our horn ensemble day as things worked reasonably well that day, but things that I have noticed through playing it. I have slightly re-aligned the valve levers to make the mechanics of it a tiny bit more efficient. After the horn had had its third hot bath to clean it out, the clock-spring had unfortunately broken inside the second valve lever’s spring cylinder (perhaps it rusted, or broke through metal fatigue) so I shall have to fix that. It’s a job I have done before, but it really needs an extra pair of hands to hold all the parts in place when closing up the cylinder after remounting a spring. I will try to do these things before the end of the project, but as there is only just over a month to go now, it is important to get on with the second instrument.
The hand horn bell is almost ready to be connected to the next section. I have made several tenons for crook receivers and one coupler for this horn. I am sure that I can complete this instrument too before the end of the sabbatical.
Saturday 2 August
Last weekend on my day off Katrina and I decided to attempt to see a local geological phenomenon: a high natural rock arch which is just visible from the highway if you know where to look. The map shows a trail leading towards it, but being printed in 1997 it wouldn’t have known that the trail was to be washed away in last spring’s snow melt. Nevertheless we had a most enjoyable walk up an old logging road just beyond the non-existent trail that took us about half way up the mountain. On the way we passed several wild raspberry bushes that looked like promising pickings to me, but we had packed a lunch which we ate in a clearing at the end of the track. We didn’t see the rock arch.
Half way back down Katrina suddenly told me to stop. There was a large black bear eating raspberries about 200 meters in front of us and it hadn’t seen or heard us - we were downwind of him and it was fairly windy. As we needed to walk right past where she / he was enjoying his meal we had to either find another route down or try to persuade him / her to move. There was no other route so we began making lots of noise to try to scare it away. I had the pepper spray at the ready in case it was feeling confrontational, but luckily it eventually ran up the slope at quite fast rate, looking back every few steps, perhaps to see that we weren’t either eating the raspberries or following. Unfortunately it didn’t occur to either of us to photograph it, survival being uppermost in our minds.
After our four hour long hike we were back at the car having not seen another human being all day. Where else can one walk for four hours and not see another person? Apart from the bear, locally Katrina has also seen a young moose and a baby skunk. We have also seen a large beaver that enjoys a swim at about 6.45 pm in a beaver dam on the creek at the side of the road on the way back from the workshop. At night we are sometimes awakened by the high pitched howls of what we suspect are probably coyotes or could be wolves.
Unfortunately I also discovered a wolf on my horn. As many string players know, a wolf-note is a note which refuses to be played cleanly or resonate in the way it should. After I had made my F crook for the “Strauss” horn I tested it and found that my C in the stave really didn’t want to work properly. It was slightly flat and had a tendency towards a gruff articulation. This was really not acceptable. I had to try to diagnose the cause of it. My first suspicions were the F crook itself. It had been very difficult for me to bend the tubing to the shape I had drawn up: a circle that crossed over at both ends, like two overlapping letter ‘C’s. I suspected that there was some unevenness within the tube. I rigged up some straight lengths of tube sticking out from the tuning slide legs, and stuck on a U-bend with duct tape so that the horn looked something like a cross between a trombone and a horn. Playing it like that I was convinced that it was an improvement. So two days of painstaking work had to be forgotten and I had to make another but better F crook.
The new and improved F crook was easier and quicker to make: easier to bend into shape and assemble; looks better; makes the body of the horn slimmer, and made the horn balance better in my hands. It uses the previously made main tuning slide that the horn needs to play in Bb (inserted on the end) so that there are two sections with which to tune the instrument to different pitches and here it is:
If you look closely you may notice that the button screws are now on the front of the valve mechanism. These arrived back from the engraver, Vladimir Vancura, at the beginning of this week, along with the valve caps. I think he has done a beautiful job recreating a 19th century design which can be more clearly seen on the other side of the instrument:
With such a beautiful job on the engraving I felt obliged to make the instrument both look and sound as beautiful as possible. I felt it was necessary to change three of the braces between the tubes in the middle of the horn, but it was also back to the testing stage. Did the new F crook work better? Yes, but not well enough: the wolf was still there, though to a lesser extent. After consultation with Keith the next suspicion was the mouthpipe. There had been some problems bending this too, and I felt I could do a better job making this. Another day’s work had to be redone with careful testing along the way. This time the new mouthpipe was assembled with a playing test after each join was made to the horn. It worked well after the first soldering to the valve ferrule. It worked well after the second, third and fourth joints against adjoining tubing. I adjusted the mouthpipe brace and soldered that too. The problem was solved! My conclusion: a poorly made mouthpipe can cause wolf-notes on a horn. It now looks almost the same as in these pictures, but it works much better. I now only have to make some minor adjustments, clean it and polish it and it is made. Tomorrow I will test it out playing quartets and / or quintets with some “local” horn players who are willing to drive a couple of hours to join Keith, Jane and myself.
Tuesday 22 July
Brilliant news: the valve horn now plays! To test it I assembled a temporary tuning slide to check that my calculations of tube lengths were right. I did this by using the slide legs that I had already prepared and adding an old spare bow from Keith’s useful-bits box. I found that after blowing a few notes the horn was within 1cm of its correct theoretical length – an amount easily accountable by different players’ embouchures. I’m pleased to say that on first impressions it seemed to play rather well, but I won’t comment further until I have completely finished it. This meant that I could go ahead and make the main tuning slide to the size and shape of the original.
There have been several minor structural improvements to the horn. I have been making 19th century style braces for it, to make it stable and strong enough to be carried around. In this picture I am testing out a piece of narrow tube to see if I cut the right size to fit the space between the tubes leading to the main tuning slide.
The braces on the original horn on the bell and mouthpipe are rather ornate: in those days (1867) there seemed to be time to make parts that were more than just functional. I felt it was important to emulate this aspect, so even though one can buy these parts ready made from instrument maker suppliers nowadays, I made my own from scratch, taking about half a day to make each one. These can be seen in the next picture at the narrow and fat end of the instrument. They are made by turning brass rod on a lathe and silver soldering a round piece of sheet brass on each end.
The button screws that I made earlier to go on top of the valve mechanism have not yet arrived back from the engraver so at the moment the horn has normal screws on top of the linkage. Here the horn is assembled with all its Bb tuning slides including the newly made main slide. As soon as I have finished making the longer main tuning slide it will be possible to set it up as an F horn too. To play in F, this slide needs to be just over one meter longer, so my current task is coiling the extra tube on the front of the instrument in an appropriate 19th century style. The original F slide or crook is missing, so I have to imagine what shape it might have been. Once this final piece is made it will only be left for me to clean, polish and practice it while I return to work on the Sandbach hand horn.
To celebrate the almost complete instrument, Keith invited Katrina and me to join his family on Sunday, hiking up one the nearest mountains: McBride Peak. After driving up a steep gravel road for half an hour in first gear in Keith’s four wheel drive, we ascended on foot from about 5300 to 7300 feet. This is quite high for people who normally live just above sea level but the reward was spectacular views across the Robson Valley and Mount Robson clear in the distance. Here we are above the snow line enjoying the moment.
Saturday 12 July
The Canadians have a unique ability when it comes to naming places. We’ve seen how Berg Lake takes its name from the fact that it is a lake that has icebergs in it. Here are some other examples of places named after their characteristics: Cascade Mountain; Icefields Parkway; Mosquito Creek; Beaver Creek; Radium Hot Springs; Horsefly; Emerald Lake; Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. Keith’s workshop is located on Brown Road: a mud and gravel road that just happens to be a certain colour. A couple of weeks ago Brown Road changed for the worse, at least as far as I am concerned. En route to the shop (as I must call it) we met a grader coming in the opposite direction. A grader is a sort of road plough that is supposed to level off the road and sprinkle gravel on it. I had considered the road rather good for cycling on until this grader dug it up and put quite a lot more bumps and gravel onto it. So now I am getting even fitter on my sabbatical by having to cycle over a rougher terrain with more sandy sections: more friction, more muscle exertion, same distance to work.
Sabbaticals, it appears, can also be about being ill when there is no pressure to be at work. In my working life I don’t recall missing a day’s work through illness, except for the day when I broke my thumb falling off a motorbike on my way to a concert venue. I can’t blame the weather, but I will blame a virus that gave me a fever from Monday to Friday last week. It took the weekend to get back some strength, but this week has brought some exciting progress on the horn building project.
This is the week where the first instrument has really started to look like a horn. The first thing that gives it its characteristic shape is the curved bell. First the bell needs to be filled with bending alloy and here it is being poured into the bell:
After cooling the alloy returns to its solid form and the bell can be bent by hand to the desired state. Here I am comparing the bend to a sketch amended to Keith’s template:
Once the bend has been completed and the inside of the curve has been smoothed, the alloy needs removing again. This is done by placing the bell into a cauldron of hot water so that the alloy will melt out. Keith has a wood burning stove to heat up the water so this is a good thing to do on a cold day.
The next day was a bit finer so I was able to work outside the shop sanding the bell. This is just as well, because the fine brass dust that comes off at this stage is not healthy to breathe in. The inside of the curve needs extra attention as this is where the metal has become compressed and thicker during the bending.
I then had something on which to attach the valve lever mount. First this needed a little solder work:
Adding on a newly bent curve to exit the valve system, it was necessary to hold the parts in place to see how they will fit together:
After bending the mouthpipe into shape, this also needed to be checked out in situ before assembly. Here a temporary piece of scrap tube has been soft soldered onto a slide leg and the bell, in order to give some stability to the structure ahead of next stage of assembly.
I hope that given a few more days work this horn will be ready to test out, so I must now make sure that I’m getting back into practice!
Wednesday 2 July
They say a bad workman blames his tools. Well, it’s nice that Keith can adjust his tools to make them work well because I wouldn’t have known how to adjust the lathe to make these crook receiver tenons have a tight fit. The mandrels shown on the last blog entry were cut on with slightly too sharp a gradient. All the indications were that I had chosen the correct angle of cut, but it was not quite a perfect fit. With the use of a dial indicator we discovered that the angle marked on the lathe’s protractor was not as accurate as we needed and I had to re-cut the tenon mandrels with half a degree less on the conical part. I am now making much better tenons using thicker brass that should last longer than the first batch I made.
The exciting news is that I have now fitted the garland to the bell of the “Franz Strauss” horn. This was a job that I had done in 2002 on a trumpet bell, but one that Keith had never had call to do before. Luckily the same principles were involved on a trumpet as on a horn and the bell now really looks like a 19th century instrument. (With the same tool marks too!)
I have also been allowed to make a mouthpipe. This is the tube that expands gradually from the mouthpiece receiver up to the bore of the middle section of the horn. It’s a crucial part of the instrument that can make a horn play really well or really badly. Unfortunately it will still be a while before I can test it because the rest of the instrument needs to be ready too… It is nice to be able to make this in the traditional way on a steel mandrel, shrinking down the tube to fit the correct profile. Not all horn makers still make the mouthpipe this way.
I am writing this on July 1st: Canada Day. This is a bank holiday marking the birth of this country. It is now 141 years old and there should be fireworks in the cities. I have marked it by suffering from a ‘flu-type fever, possibly brought on by experiencing too much heat over the weekend when it reached a high of over 40ºC. Being the weekend closest to Canada Day there were some special events to see and Katrina and I decided to go to the William’s Lake Stampede. In other words, a rodeo - and reputedly one of the best in the country. It’s all part of my cultural education… I’ve now seen steer wrestling where horsemen chase a young bull, leap from the saddle and pull it to the ground; cart racing of the coach and four horses variety; synchronized stunt riding by young women; mountain horse racing; and most important of all, saddled and bare back bucking-bronco riding; bull riding; barrel racing and calf roping: a great afternoon’s entertainment. One has to sympathise with these cowboys who only make a living from these events over the summer – as long as they win or come in the top three places. It’s probably even more precarious than being a freelance musician!
Tuesday June 24th
So far I have managed to avoid mentioning any of my mistakes in the workshop. However, now that the boss has seen my handiwork created in his absence, it seems only fair to say that I still have some improvements to make to my tube bending. As this is done by hand without the benefit of dyes or previously made curves to measure against, there has been a certain amount of improvising on the job. I was pleased to be able to finish the valve slide crooks last week, but now I have to continue smoothing the tube in one or two places where I failed to iron out the flaws when the tube was still filled with bending alloy. This is slightly frustrating as it looks good enough to play, but it isn’t an absolutely perfect finish, and I know that a full time craftsman would not be satisfied with it. So in this task I am back to searching for tiny indentations on the sides of the tubes, sending dent balls down inside, and tapping the outside with small hammers.
I was also pleased to have made my first crook receiver tenon for the hand horn last week. This was made on my own freshly made mandrel, but the mandrel was turned on the lathe from a hard plastic product that I had bought in a craft shop. After making three tenons on it, unfortunately it has not stood the test of time. I have had to make a replacement from tool steel which should now last a very long time. In the photo you can see my first effort made in orange (no problem finding it when I put it down!) with the replacement made from steel. I have made two steel versions: one for Keith and one for myself.
In the next picture the tenon is mounted on a partly finished coupler. This coupler and three others of different sizes will extend the length of the horn from higher keys to lower ones.
I will now be making two horns side by side. The garland for the “Franz Strauss model” has arrived, so I can return to working on this valve horn. For contrast I can continue with making tenons, crooks and other parts of the Sandbach hand horn. Yesterday a whole day was spent calculating lengths of crooks and couplers to make sure the horn will play (hopefully) equally well at modern tuning pitch (A=440Hz), standard classical pitch (A=430Hz) and standard baroque pitch (A=415Hz). I believe I have found solutions for all of these tunings in all keys, but the proof will be found when I test out the finished product.
An advantage that self-employed people have is that they can choose which days they will work. So far, in my enthusiasm, I have been working on several weekends as well as during the week. Keith has been able to take some time to dedicate to his family and this week there was a trip taking nine 9 – 13 year olds from Dunster Fine Arts School, including his two children Eric and Laurel, up to Berg Lake on the side of Mount Robson. (This is the highest mountain in the Canadian Rockies.) Katrina and I were pleased to be asked to join his family for the trip and to be able to spend some time with younger people too. It seemed only right to visit a place that is both an extraordinary natural phenomenon, and is given the same name as my host. It turned out to be a test of physical endurance too as we were obliged to carry 40 pound back packs containing tent, food and clothes climbing from 2600 feet to over 5400 feet over the course of 15 miles in two days. Keith brought his alphorn and we were able to take turns playing it in some beautifully resonant valleys. I spotted a large black bear close to our campsite, which fortunately ambled away from our area after it saw that humans were present. Berg Lake is so called as it is literally a lake with icebergs in it. They break off from the Berg Glacier and fall into the lake with crash that sounds like thunder, sending waves across the water more than a mile. Here it is with the lower part of the north face of Mount Robson on the right.
The trail head is about 40 minutes from where we are staying, but I never got to do trips like this when I was at school! I have to say that the school children were very well behaved and took all the hiking, camping and cooking in their stride.
Saturday June 14th
My master, Mr. Berg, being away this week, has left me to my own devices in the workshop. (Or rather, the “shop” as they say this side of the Atlantic.) I was therefore determined to finish all the slide crooks so that the valve assembly would be ready when he returned. Fortunately I had a ready volunteer to help me in this process. Rumpole would refer to her as “She who must be obeyed”, but I just call her Katrina and in this instance she was taking instructions from me. Between the two of us we smoothed the crook tubing, then I measured it and trimmed some length where necessary before soldering on the slide legs. I made up some braces from brass rod on the lathe and soldered them into position. Then we sanded off the scorch marks from the blow torch and any marks left by tools, and finished them with polish.
You can see below how the brass becomes blackened with repeated annealing – necessary to make the metal soft enough to be manipulated into shape.
Finally our work was rewarded by seeing the six slides all ready: three for use in F (mounted on the valve block in the photo) and three for playing on Bb horn. Here they are three quarters of the way through the finishing process:
I had to decide whether to try out making the mouthpipe next or wait for Keith’s return for that job. Despite the fact that I have made one before, Keith’s methods differ a little from the way I was taught, and I decided to wait for him. Images of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice were cropping up in my head… Other jobs I could get on with for this horn require the bell to be bent, and at this stage we are waiting for the delivery of a garland for the bell, to be fitted before bending, so really this was it for this horn for the time being. (You will see the garland later – it’s a reinforcing sheet of brass that wraps around the bell rim. More common on older instruments, we decided that it would be too time consuming to make up the tools necessary to make our own garland for one particular bell diameter, so last week I ordered one from the bell maker in Germany.)
Time to start work on the hand horn. I began by making a mandrel for the crook receiver tenon. This piece has to be made several times over as one is needed for each coupler as well as one on the body of the horn. It needs to be conical over about 3 cm or 1½” to make an airtight push fit between the different lengths of tube. I tested it out by making the first female tenon: forcing a short length of tube onto the cone of the mandrel. After quite a lot of persuasion it finally agreed to do my bidding and attained the right shape. Yesterday I bent the first and largest coupler into a circular shape and fitted tenons to each end. (I had been able to bring a bag of the male tenons from England for this purpose.) So work has begun on the Sandbach hand horn at the end of the fourth week of horn building.
Saturday June 7th
On the subject of faithful reproductions, here is an interesting anomaly: on close inspection it looks like three of the tuning slides with the Ottensteiner horn are made by somebody other than the original maker. My evidence is that on the body and Bb slides, the ferrules have a groove cut into them and the braces are round, whereas on the tuning slides for the horn in F, the ferrules have no groove and the braces are pointed. Should I copy something on the horn that may be a later addition? I have decided not. I want the horn to be able to stand in Bb or F, but I also want it to look elegant and like a 19th century instrument. Acoustically it will not really make any difference whether the wrap of the tube looks like 20th century conventional (as it does on these F slides) or one of the 19th century wraps. So for my F slide crooks I am adopting a shape that comes from another contemporaneous German maker. I hope this will also make it more aesthetically pleasing to the eye.
This week (four days) has been spent making three slide crooks by annealing the right length of tube (making it red hot), filling it with bending alloy and then using various bending jigs to bend it by hand to the desired shape. First I had to make a drawing of each shape and size to refer to when bending the tube. Then after the shape had been achieved, before the bending alloy was removed, any wrinkles that appeared in the tube had to be hammered out. After the alloy is removed a number of different tools are used to make sure that the tube still has the correct bore and is round throughout its length. These include tiny hammers for the inside of loops, larger hammers for the outside, steel rings that the tubing can be pushed through, and dent balls that go inside the tube and push out any indentations from the inside. I am sorry to report that none of these three crooks is ready after a week of work, although they look superficially as if they are nearly finished. The time consuming part of it has been the last part of the process: making sure the tubing is absolutely smooth. I hope a few hours next week will complete this stage of manufacture.
The week has also been eventful in other ways. On Monday, after a half day’s work we took a trip with the Berg family and the alphorns up a trail to Kinney Lake. There is a good spot here for getting echoes back across the water from the opposite mountains. After an hour and a half’s walking mainly up hill (only a little tiring if one is carrying a wooden alphorn) we played alphorn duets and trios using a natural horn for the third part. This horn I can only describe as a “hiking horn” as it was originally a Czech-made school instrument, but after a demanding life it has had its tired valves removed and replaced with a section of tube to make it lightweight and useable if stuffed into a rucksack. I must say it is quite charming to play alphorns in this way and I began to feel an interest growing in finding some more repertoire for these instruments.
Keith and Jane Berg playing alphorns across Kinney Lake with Penny listening…
Keith and I in the same location
On Thursday we planned a trip to the Banff Centre to hear the Mnozil Brass, a group I have been wanting to hear for some time, due to their reputation for being extremely entertaining and having seen a short clip of them on YouTube. Sadly the day did not work out as planned, as after over an hour on the road Keith pulled his car over to the side of the road to take a phone call. A family tragedy had occurred, and Keith had to return home to organise his family to mourn the sudden passing away of his elder brother. Katrina and I were unable to offer much beyond sympathy for this unexpected turn of events. After a brief stop in Jasper he turned around and Katrina and I carried on to Banff.
Despite it being a rainy day we arrived in time to put up our tent just outside the town during a dry spell, then went back into town for the concert. The concert was delayed for about half an hour to allow 300 members of the International Trumpeters Guild to arrive from their conference banquet, but when it eventually began it was well worth the wait. We had a first half of Flugelhorn jazzman Guido Basso fronting a quintet, followed by a full programme (giving us three halves – good value for $21 or about ₤11!) from the seven players from Mnozil who played entirely from memory, choreographed, singing, nose recorder playing and all delivered without a hint of humour as promised in the programme note. The presentation was professional from start to finish and whether it was brass instruments or vocal gymnastics the ensemble, blend and intonation was immaculate - a rôle model for musical entertainment. Afterwards I was able to purchase a DVD of one of their live performances so Keith will be able to see something of them after all.
Sunday June 1st
At some point I must mention the beautiful surroundings in which we find ourselves for this project, but as I have been working solidly every day, I haven’t had much opportunity to spend time appreciating them. At lunch time there are humming birds which come out of the trees, checking out the bright objects they can see through the window in case they contain nectar, only to discover that the work lamp “flower” cannot be reached through the glass. I have borrowed a bicycle from a friend of Katrina’s family for the duration of the summer and have been cycling the four kilometers to the workshop every morning and back in the evening up quite a steep hill. I carry a can of bear-spray (pepper spray) in case I encounter a bear and need to try to deter it from eating me, but so far I have only seen deer, ground squirrels and butterflies on my journeys.
The work this week began with making adjustments to the valve lever mechanism to make it attach to the back of the rotor shaft. The old bearings on the end of the levers that I am using needed replacing, so I soldered on new ones. The original horn has “button” hand screws on the front side that need to be made up by hand on a lathe. Here is its mid section:
A coin-sized head was then attached by silver solder before adding the screw thread later:
Finally I polished the screw “buttons” ready to post them, along with the valve caps to an expert engraver in Saskatchewan who will give them a 19th century style pattern. The originals are plain but it is typical of the period that they should be decorated and I wanted to add a bit of flair to the finish. Here is the assembled mechanism:
Each valve will have two sets of tuning slides. One for the instrument when crooked in F, one for when in Bb. Each slide has a bow soldered via a ferrule to legs which fit their receiver legs (once lapped into place) next to the valve block. Here are several of the cut pieces ready to be assembled with soft solder:
Experts will notice missing bows for the first and third valve slides. That’s because they still need to be made. The first of these is under construction right now, so more on this later.
On Friday there was excitement in the afternoon as Keith received delivery of a new alphorn. It was quickly put together in front of the family so that he and his wife Jane could test it. It has to be mentioned that they both know how to play these instruments rather well, and I felt rather amateurish trying it out after them (for the first time ever) on my second day of trying to play a horn again after a gap of three weeks. Keith has been known to leave one of the local park wardens in tears when playing the alphorn in the Rockies as it reminds him of his old country of Switzerland. It probably also helps to ward off the grizzlies!
Sunday May 25th
After arriving in Dunster on Monday evening, Katrina and I unpacked in our rental house. The dog Summit, our landlord and landlady Bob and Glenda were friendly and welcoming and we were offered us plenty of advice on the area. We have views of snow-capped peaks in a couple of directions and yesterday afternoon I actually touched some of the white stuff to make sure it was real.
We received the article from the Richard Strauss Institute about Franz Strauss’s 1867 Ottensteiner horn on Saturday (yesterday). It gives a lot of background for the instrument which is useful, but doesn’t give as much technical detail as we have from Edinburgh University for the Sandbach hand horn. So today I have spent some time extrapolating measurements from photograghs of the Ottensteiner to determine the shape of its bell expansion and length of the mouthpipe.
In the meantime, this week I have begun work on the valve section and lever mount for the “Franz Strauss” model. Keith, my instructor has had several very useful suggestions for how to go about attaching the lever mechanism and I will explore these next week. In the photo at the top of this article I am working on shaping the lever mount using the centre drill.
You should see how helpful the drill was in the right-hand picture (above).
And left is the finished piece. Next it will need to be brazed to a shaped piece of sheet brass, ready to be soft soldered to the main body of the horn as shown in the illustration. Then the clockspring levers (shown on the right) can be attached.
This week I have also cut brass tubing for the valve tuning slide lengths and soldered them to the valves. In the next photo Keith is giving me instruction on how best to do this whilst working on a valve section for one of his customers.
So far I have discovered a great sense of perfectionism in his work. All tubing joints must match perfectly – no jagged or loose ends are allowed. If I thought I could get away with doing things by short cuts I was wrong!
I have not played a note on a horn now since May 9th. It is just over a week since the tooth extraction. My gum is healing nicely and my mouth feels nearly normal again. Perhaps in a few days I’ll test out some notes again, but there’s not much pressure as my next professional engagement is still a few months away.
Monday May 19th
I suppose it is literally a weight off my shoulders to find myself minus a molar today, but quite how much it's hard to tell by standing on the weighing scales!
It may seem a bit odd to start a sabbatical by having a wisdom tooth extracted, but actually it was important to find a time to do it when I didn't need my mouth for horn playing for a minimum of two weeks. The emotional weight off my mind is that I still have sensation in my lower lip.
My dental surgeon explained that although in general the chances of permanent numbness after excision surgery were lower than 1 in 500, if he were to see ten patients with impacted wisdom teeth like mine in a row, he would expect maybe even two or three of them to have post-operative nerve damage. So after some consideration we decided to only extract the visible wisdom tooth on my right lower jaw, but wait and see about the other tooth which has grown horizontally against its neighbour's root on the lower left. This proved to be a good decision as far as the extracted tooth was concerned, as it was showing signs of infection due to being partially covered by gum - a good place for bacteria to make a home. The other remaining one at least cannot become infected as it is totally embedded in bone, making it more difficult to remove, but unfortunately is showing early signs of "cystic activity" and is possibly damaging the next tooth along. Another X-ray in six to twelve months will be necessary.
The difficulty for wind players deciding on the right course of dental action to take in these situations is that it is now recommended to leave wisdom teeth well alone when they first come through, as in 60-70% of cases they cause no problem. So despite being warned that I might need to have mine removed in 1986, I have put off their extraction to avoid potential nerve damage and keep myself available for professional work. Now that I am over forty my bones are harder than they were in my twenties and my wisdom teeth have grown strong roots, so it is more difficult to have the work done now than it would have been. At least this way I have had a good number of years of horn playing before risking facial nerve damage.
The operation seems to have been a success as I really haven't suffered any pain, the stitching seems very neat, and I should be able to test out the new set-up by playing a horn again in a couple of weeks. Today it is ice packs and ibuprofen to keep down swelling from bruising and cutting the bone.
As long as the recovery process continues well, I'll be on my way to Keith Berg's workshop at the start of next week. Two good pieces of news for the historical horns projects: the Sandbach hand horn bell is already made and on its way, despite an initial forecast of a July delivery date. So work on this horn could begin almost immediately. And the Richard Strauss Institute in Germany have emailed to say that they have sent me by post some more detailed measurements of Franz Strauss's 1867 valve horn. I just hope that Keith will be comfortable with my workshop skills, or I might have a steep learning curve on my hands adopting his work practices. I decided to leave behind many of my own workshop tools in order to familiarise myself better with possibly new ways of doing things, but I did bring several useful pieces of equipment, some of which I believe will be new to Keith. If it won't break too many trade secrets, some of these will be revealed over the next few weeks, hopefully with some photographic examples.
Saturday May 10th
Luggage allowance: 2 check in bags of up to 23 kg
Does everything fit and weigh in at under this?
Mow the lawn.
Wash motor bike, disconnect battery, lube chain.
Clean bathrooms.
Check insurance covers everything: travel, health, house contents, vehicles, musical instruments.
Leave notes about the house for guests.
What to take and what to leave behind?
Before returning home I need concert clothes for two performances in New York, but before then I need overalls, some brass-work tools, clothing for all weather types in the Rocky Mountains from May to September, a few gifts, music (written and recorded), bicycle helmets, spare horn case. And I need to take a horn with me to practice and possibly to play in New York, if none of the models that I make end up being suitable for a chamber opera by Haydn. Deep down I hope that one of the new models I make over the summer will in fact be ideal for this work, and it should be a good opportunity to have a test run. In the meantime it is now full steam ahead into my mid-life sabbatical - taking a break from playing horns with orchestras - and spending four months collaborating and apprenticing with Canadian horn maker Keith Berg. We hope that with his experience of making horns for over twenty years, plus my experience of playing many different historical horns for the same period of time and modifying and repairing them for the last six years, we should be able to produce three new interesting models: an early 19th century (valveless) natural horn; a 19th century 3-valved single horn, and with luck (given the time frame) a new type of modern horn using a new valve system (self-designed) that we believe will offer advantages over standard valve horns.
Taxi collects me and my luggage at 11 a.m. on May 11 (tomorrow) and I'll arrive in Edmonton, Canada some 13 hours later. A new existence follows from now until mid-September. I'm looking forward to it.