Falset (Music)

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Falset is the latitude for a brasswind player's pitch-control of a harmonic, while only just sufficient in middle and high registers to allow for care over intonation, becomes in the low register very wide in the flattening direction; indeed without this the conventional system of three valves would have had a very limited future owing to the sharpness of the valve combinations required by the low register.

At H2 the pitch can sometimes be dropped by a fourth or more by means of what is often termed loose-lipping, a sort of dragging of embouchure which produces facticious pitches not allowed for by the simple theory of the harmonic series. A useful historical term for this is from the German Praetorius in connection with the cornett; playing 'in falset'. Hornplaying has known it from the eighteenth century, for instance notes down to low G (written in bass clef as G') met in classical parts. Mathematicians from Mersenne onwards have suggested explanations for these sounds, in some cases recently requiring a considerably revised view of the structure and genesis of the harmonic series which will surely lead in time to satisfactory elucidation of corresponding anomalies that crop up in the early history of sounding small horns and other instruments with the lips.