Fiscorn powerful baritone voice has no counterpart, (save perhaps the piston-valved marching baritone), in the organology. The forward-projected sound makes a pair of fiscorns the most suitable two instruments to join the shrill Catalan shawms (tenoras and tibles) and flabiol pipe, together with trumpets and trombone in the outdoor town-square setting where the cobla bands play for sardana dancers. While the instrument is often played by trombonists, its conical nature is easily mastered by tuba or euphonium players. Several instrument manufacturers have attempted to solve the intonational discrepancies of the instrument in recent years, with a varied success. The instrument is
Brass instrument almost universal by (at latest) 1864 as witnessed by Arban's Method published in that year. The effect of a particular combination of valves may be seen in the table below. This table is correct for the core 3-valve layout on almost any modern valved brass instrument. The most common four-valve layout is a superset of the well-established 3-valve layout and is noted in the table, despite the exposition of four-valve and also five-valve systems (the latter used on the tuba) being incomplete in this article. Since valves "lower" the pitch, a valve that makes a pitch too low (flat) creates