Pedal B flat is the fundamental, low B flat is the 2x, F 3x, mid B flat the 4x, D the 5X, high F is 6X, G half sharp is 7X and high B flat is 8X.
The position your music teacher most likely will have told you to adjust is 2nd position - you play it slightly sharper for an A vs the E or C sharp it's also used for.
Why is that? It's the major 3rd that has the largest variation between just and equal temperament. The A is often a 3rd against the F, is that why?
But it seems to me that it's all the notes on the D embouchure that will be off -- 1st position D on the trombone is 5X the fundamental, so it's justly tuned, not equally tuned, so shouldn't it be the one that needs the most adjustment? I guess all wind instruments have this problem, so maybe I don't notice because usually I'm playing in a wind band with very few equally tempered instruments like piano, guitar and glockenspiel?
The D in 1st position - it varies from horn to horn but more often than not yes it'll be a little flat. If you're playing the D as the third of a Bb major chord, then you're already adjusted, easy. If you need a really in-tune D, either 1) tune the whole horn such that 1st position is not quite "all the way in" so you have some room to sharpen the D, 2) use the D in 4th position instead.
Lowering the thirds of chords when you're playing them is generally not something people worry about until they're serious players. And it's really more of an ear training thing than a neuroticism thing. The exercise is to play a static drone over some speakers (say a D), and then play each note of a D major chord up the range, sliding in an out until you can sort of feel the overtones locking in. On the F# you'll feel the lock-in at a flatter position that F# normally is. And the idea is that this proprioceptive sense of intonation will then carry over to your playing.
Manufacturers have different philosophies around this as well. I have a vintage mid-1960s King 3b whose partials line up differently and require different adjustment from my modern XO 1634... and both of those horns are extremely similar .508 bore tenor trombones.
The just/equal temperament thing lead me to suspect that it was the 5th partial (a major 3rd partial, the D) that would be the one most likely to be off, but a trombone is neither a perfect cylinder nor a perfect cone so simplified models might be off. The perfect 5th (aka both the F partials) is pretty exact on an ideal model, but a real trombone isn't ideal.
I don't think intervals are unique to trombones. If you understand that X+1 is a half step above X, and you know note X is 1st valve and note X+1 is 1+2, then you know adding 2-to-1 adds a half step even if you've never seen a trombone.
I tuned my piano to EBVTIII and I like it. (well I tuned 3 notes and then got my son interested and he tuned the rest). It isn't as hard to tune a piano as professionals make it out. However it takes me about 5x as long so if you can find a good tuner I'd call it worth it.
Thanks, but I'll stick to my keyboard's pitch bend control.
The trombone's great expressiveness comes at a steep learning cost.
Trombone is great for people who learned to play by ear.
For those who can easily hear the 13 cent difference between a justly tuned major third and an equally tuned major third, justly tuned instruments can be really hard to play.
But I am, like most, like you. I first learned on the piano and my ear is pretty bad for an experienced trombonist. I have a pretty good ear compared to the average person, but compared to a typical trombonist, it's really bad.
I play with others who have incredible ears. It makes me jealous.
(I played trombone throughout middle and high school.)
But brass being out of tune is not as hard on the ears as the squeaks from a beginner clarinet or saxophone...
Probably the most parent friendly is the flute. It's really hard to get good volume out of a flute so beginners are really quiet and inoffensive. :)
A group of trombonists all playing in a giant underground water tank with incredibly long reverb.
Pink Trombone
https://github.com/imaginary/pink-trombone
Evy Kassirer - !!Con 2019 - Reverse engineering your mouth! by Evy Kassirer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTwjirrCuDE&t=34s
Zack Quattan - Pink Trombone Playlist - Gamepad / MIDI / Machine Learning / Phoneme Classifier / etc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LflxVULOtLs&list=PLzgiV7-SLJ...
https://deepwiki.com/zakaton/Pink-Trombone
pink trombone controlled by max msp via OSC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7eJ209ayFw
Circuit Bending - Pink Trombone "Speech Synthesis"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_qd116njyk
How to break Pink Trombone
It's a good game for every aspiring trobonist (or people just remotely interested in music-related video games)
> The trombone is the only brass instrument in a classical orchestra […] where the main mode of pitch control is by moving the tuning slide.
Which is correct.
(Some relatively rare instruments like the Shires Alto do "tuning in slide" with a mechanism for fine adjustment in the hand slide).
If you're also moving the tuning slide in the middle of a piece you're probably a bass trombonist doing the now-impossible glissando (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWJPeA_1g48) in the Bartok concerto for orchestra.