band directors who perform: tuning

[bloke]

On the topic of odd ensembles tuning, I've had professional bagpipers - who were asked to come in and work with amateur pipe bands - tell me how frustrating it was for them to be there, because those amateurs would take up to thirty minutes - or even longer - to tune their bagpipes, when it should take about 10 or 15 seconds, and then they would finally start running through their tunes. I was told that the major would attempt to tune every note on every every instrument, and not only was this pointless, but the players (nor their reeds) weren't consistent enough for this to have done any good. Just as with brass bands, pipe bands compete, and just as with brass bands, some of them are extraordinarily good and some of them are just so so. They refer to the level of playing that they've achieved by various numbers, and really accomplished professional players sort of subtly do this when someone refers to the level of achievement they've been rated at with one of those numbers.

To the topic of where A is located, if you want a pipe band to play something - whereby you can play along with them in B-flat major, you need to tell them to play it in A major.

[Three Valves]

One of the bands I play in (for now) has a 1st clarinet "concertmaster" who gets up and harangues the band about tuning for a good ten, and sometimes fifteen, minutes at the beginning of every single rehearsal, and sometimes even after the break.

That’s because the clarinets are ALWAYS out of tune!

[Mary Ann]

Well, HE isn't. Just ASK him. And since you got me going again, because he can't get the trumpet section to quit playing sharp, he now tunes the band to 444, which of course the double reeds have trouble with. You can't push in an oboe or bassoon reed any farther than it already is. At least the bassoons, if they wise up, can use a shorter bocal, but the oboes are SOL.

[bloke]

It requires an urban population of several million before an ensemble is able to round up really fine trumpet players who are willing to play "for the love of it".

[2nd tenor]

@2nd tenor

- My first instrument - which was given to me around age 4 - was a pressed board ukulele. The frets were all wrong because it was a toy, and my brother - who was nearly 13 years older - tore off the fretboard and made a replacement one out of heavy poster board and toothpicks (clipped off to the correct widths, with the points cut off) whereby the frets were the correct spacing and locations. Those - other than trying to pick out the things that my 10-year-older sister was being taught in her piano lessons on the piano - during the previous year) were my first experiences with tuning and with learning songs and playing them.

- The reference pitch "A" has been at quite a few places across the western world over the centuries, according to historians and according to old instruments. My understanding is that the tuning in and around the time and place of Bach was just about almost exactly a semitone lower than where we are today. The "Hallelujah Chorus", I suppose, should really be played in D flat major, and the highest soprano and piccolo trumpet pitches would be a little bit easier to reach then, wouldn't they?

I honestly don't get this A=442 jazz. What's the point (unless it's simply supposed to address everyone's natural tendency to play sharp when they are trying to hear themselves and when they begin to get tired) ? When I'm playing very low pitches on the tuba in these A=442 (whether official or de facto) ensembles, they usually sound a little bit better, more resonant, and more foundational when played at the A=440 reference level, for the same reason that flat pitches in the very bottom of the piano range improve the sound of the piano ("perfect" 5ths and 12ths - above the pitches that I play, which tend to be tonics - tend to ring more). Whether I'm right or wrong, or whether I'm perceiving properly or not perceiving things properly, at least I'm thinking and trying...LOL

What a fortunate child you were both in terms of someone giving you an instrument and in having someone make sure it was playable for you. As a child there was music in my home but somehow it didn’t reach me; my siblings didn’t play but listened to pop music and Mum played hymns on the piano - not expertly but well enough for Sunday School. Ukes weren’t sold much here - I only discovered them in the last decade - and school recorders past by me, but for a lucky break at secondary school I’d have never learnt to play anything. Anyway, all that aside, my personal view is that Ukes are, in a whole heap of ways, fantastic instruments and that all children should be offered then and / or other ‘folk instruments’ as a way of both learning about music and to make it. Some might say my views are that of the uncultured heathen; I don’t mind contrasting views and getting on with others is important, but I do find that ‘elitists’ are generally best avoided - whilst the rest of us get on with having fun.

Tuning and chords brings me back to music theory and experiences that I’m aware of but not familiar with, some clever person might take my thoughts forward. We rigidly split octaves into defined pitch intervals and likewise make chords according to set pitch intervals between notes - equal temperament, etc. However the chords’ really ring when small adjustments in relative pitchs are made. Historically (centuries back) guitar players knew this and hence their frets were movable (cattle gut cord tied around the neck) and adjusted according to the key of what they played - what people now regard as a guitar is very changed from the instrument that they one were. Trombone players can do something similar too (with chords) by, via their main slides, slightly altering individual pitches to make a chord ring. This video, by the Trombone Section of River City Brass, was a revelation to me: .

To my mind or view of things the object is to make music, adhering to some perfect pitch regime is secondary and but a tool to be used with care.

[The Brute Squad]

Finally, I believe humans can memorize pitches. I believe that this is common, and makes more sense than this perfect pitch thing

This is definitely teachable. I saw it every semester in college with our concert choir. We'd start every rehearsal with all sorts of indefinite pitch warmups, then she'd give us the hand sign for do and we'd sing what we thought was our low C. She'd then play it on piano to see how close we were. By the last month of the semester, we'd be nailing it almost every day.

[arpthark]

Finally, I believe humans can memorize pitches. I believe that this is common, and makes more sense than this perfect pitch thing

This is definitely teachable. I saw it every semester in college with our concert choir. We'd start every rehearsal with all sorts of indefinite pitch warmups, then she'd give us the hand sign for do and we'd sing what we thought was our low C. She'd then play it on piano to see how close we were. By the last month of the semester, we'd be nailing it almost every day.

I had a music theory professor who had perfect pitch, but as he aged, his sense of perfect pitch was tending FLAT, so almost everything he heard, to him, seemed sharp and "out of tune." This fellow also had synesthesia, and was one of the more remarkable musicians I've met.

[bloke]

Take an 18-month-old, play a C, have them sing it. and ask them - two hours later - to sing the C again.

...If that 18-month-old can do that (day-after-day and different pitches), they've got really great pitch memory.

...but I'd wager that some people who are said to have "perfect pitch" could NOT do that when they were 18 months old...

...and either one "has" it or does NOT "have" it...yes...??

...so sure...I believe some can remember pitches better than others, but (I believe - most of the time - "perfect pitch" is a developed skill.
After all, no 18-month-old even KNOWS what a C or D or B-flat is, until someone shows them...and someone could - just as well - show them a B-flat on an out-of-tune piano or play one out-of-tune on their old high school flute...eh?

To me, it doesn't wash as "something innate", and regardless of how many certified/guarydamnteed anecdotes are posted below.

[bloke]

more on "tuning before performing"...

I have NEVER tuned with ANY brass quintet with which I've played...EVER...and some of them were damn good...(One included Ryan Anthony and Jim Thompson.)

When one of our freeway philharmonic quintets performs at nursing homes (or outdoor concerts, or INDOOR concerts), we neither blatt around on our instruments, and nor do we tune prior to any of those things. We sit and talk quietly amongst ourselves for two or three minutes in our chairs - or walk around the nursing home cafeteria or "great room" greeting folks (unless it's an actual recital, where we walk out from backstage) until time to start. We never sound "out of tune". (The trombone guy studied at Indiana with Lewis Van Haney, the first trumpet player quit their tenured trumpet professor job at Ball State to be with their husband, and the horn player studied in Philadelphia - composition - with George Crumb and horn with the P.O. horn section musicians.) Tuning (again - particularly with electronic tuners/training devices and indoor climate/temperature control, and particularly "tuning one note") is a nervous habit. Tuning is a constant process, in practice AND in performance. I believe that amateur adult groups (whereby everyone is a "fair to good" player) and student groups benefit greatly - at the beginnings of rehearsals - from playing through "warm-up" CHORD progressions prior to working on performance music UNLESS they are only playing that stuff and not LISTENING to that stuff.

[WC8KCY]

more on "tuning before performing"...

I have NEVER tuned with ANY brass quintet with which I've played...EVER...and some of them were damn good...(One included Ryan Anthony and Jim Thompson.)

When one of our freeway philharmonic quintets performs at nursing homes (or outdoor concerts, or INDOOR concerts), we neither blatt around on our instruments, and nor do we tune prior to any of those things. We sit and talk quietly amongst ourselves for two or three minutes in our chairs - or walk around the nursing home cafeteria or "great room" greeting folks (unless it's an actual recital, where we walk out from backstage) until time to start. We never sound "out of tune". (The trombone guy studied at Indiana with Lewis Van Haney, the first trumpet player quit their tenured trumpet professor job at Ball State to be with their husband, and the horn player studied in Philadelphia - composition - with George Crumb and horn with the P.O. horn section musicians.) Tuning (again - particularly with electronic tuners/training devices and indoor climate/temperature control, and particularly "tuning one note") is a nervous habit. Tuning is a constant process, in practice AND in performance. I believe that amateur adult groups (whereby everyone is a "fair to good" player) and student groups benefit greatly - at the beginnings of rehearsals - from playing through "warm-up" CHORD progressions prior to working on performance music UNLESS they are only playing that stuff and not LISTENING to that stuff.

This. The ensemble I currently play with begins rehearsals with two Bach chorales in different keys, and we're all expected to listen and make tuning adjustments while playing them.

The director will tune an individual section if it's still off at the conclusion of the second chorale, but that's seldom needed.