pitch level vs. utility bills

[bloke]

I'm more interested in NOT paying for something fleeting than having the inside of my abode constantly at some "ideal" temperature.

For the first years of my life, I grew up in a non-air-conditioned house (my baby bed was in the attic - in the south), and attended all non-air-conditioned schools.

When it's really hot (90's) I air-condition down to around 81 F. during the day and 78 F. at night.

When it's pretty darn cold (20's or teens) I heat the place up to 59 or (actually) burn wood and warm the place up to whatever I can manage about that.

I sleep on top of the sheet in the summer and under the blanket in the winter. I wear sweatshirts, long trousers, and socks in the winter, and loose fitting clothing in the summer.

...so (six months out of the year) my tuning slides are either way in or way out. Otherwise, playing wildly sharp or flat sounds "funny".

Here's bloke again, bragging about hearing the grass grow...

no...I'm really pretty bad with tuning, which is why it's what I mostly work on...but I can sure hear when it's nowhere close.

...If I cool or heat the "tuba playing" part of the house to an optimum 73 or so degrees (frankly) it feels really dry in the winter and cold in the summer, it takes time to get it to that temperature, and it costs a bunch of money (to do that every day for an hour or two, plus the time the hear or air runs constantly to get the temperature to that "optimum").

I'm curious whether many others of you are really trying to keep your utility bills down YET are trying to practice "at pitch" in spite of your wide thermostatic settings. (ie. Are any of you people who practice as much as you can manage YET are ALSO utilities cheapskates?)

Luckily, my tuning slides (well...I either built or heavily customized my instruments) have their tuning ranges "centered" on being able to play at pitch between around 60 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. (As an example, the Miraphone 98 - an 18-foot BB-flat tuba - tunes nearly all the way in when it's only c. 60 degrees in here, and about 1-3/4 inches pulled, when its around 80 degrees in here.)

[gocsick]

My instruments are in my semi finished basement, so the temperature fluctuate are pretty minor.

Many gigs are outside (Except winter time, but spring through the end of football season) though so the sousaphone and 20J slides get moved slot based on ancient temp, then get slowly adjusted as the horn changes temperature during playing. The colder weather gigs are tailgating at collegiate football games so the crowd is usually too drunk to notice intonation problems

[Schlitzz]

What he said.____^

[bloke]

I do have a shortcut in the winter which is to set the tuba in front of the gas logs, and that's about the only time I ever use the gas logs in the fireplace. That works sorta okay in the winter, but it's just as challenging to get the pitch down in the summer. LOL. At least I don't have to empty out very much condensation when I'm playing a tuba in a room where it's already in the low 80s.
It's probably way more good for me than anything else to practice playing at pitch under somewhat challenging situations.

[donn]

I'm not sure I get it. Even if you're playing in an ensemble in the house, a brass quintet or something like that would be OK, the pitch variation is a problem mainly with unlike instruments. Temperature here in the basement is pretty stable, but I can only guess that I don't have the problem, because I wouldn't know if I did?

[bloke]

Playing really high I really low overall just sounds weird. That's all.
There might (??) also be a muscle memory issue involved here as far as frequencies that I'm buzzing... only guessing

[Tubeast]

I´m not sure I´d worry too much about absolute pitch fluctuations at practising booths due to temperature change.
Maybe that´s because I´m among those lucky persons who do NOT have perfect absolute pitch and hopefully a decent relative one.

- You´ll have to adjust to absolute pitch variations wherever you go play (a = 44X-preferences will vary with ensemble)
- Apart from that, you´ll never know what ACTUAL pitch will be droned while spectators check their supply of rustling material before the downbeat, and to what extent that droned note will be picked up by the ensemble.
One is well advised to first attempt and tune to the former but eventually settle on the latter: It´s no fun to be among the two of 75 people on stage that are actually in tune with each other.
- There´s no telling which instruments on stage are getting cooled down by air flow or warmed up by heat radiation from high-powered stage lights, and to what extent.

So one could even find it to be beneficial to be used to such varying circumstances.
Perfect RELATIVE pitches with respect to one´s current function in a chord are a totally different story.

[bloke]

Percussion, electronic keyboards, the middle octave of pianos, and bowed string instruments in the United States are all tied to within a a hundredth of a semitone of a440. I work with strings a lot, and I believe they really appreciate a solid anchor (a tuba player who knows how easy it is for himself to play badly out of tune and really is conscientious about trying to play in tune) when their music takes their fingers up the fingerboard towards their faces. Truth be told, oboe players are pretty much stuck at one pitch level. They have an instrument that is completely put together, doesn't even have anything like a clarinet barrel, the reed is made to play optimally and is inserted all the way. Pretty much, the superb oboist with a superb reed and a superb instrument plays at a single pitch level.
I don't think there's anything at all wrong with striving to tune my instrument towards 440 even if an ensemble's official tuning is 442, because it's so freaking easy to play sharp when playing loud, and so much orchestral tuba stuff is loud.

When I play in jazz ensembles, the A above middle C is never higher than 440, and if the piano's been sitting around for a few weeks or a few months, it's going to be lower.

I guess I'm defending my decision to strive to play at one pitch level in my widely varying temperature practice area at home, and trying to do it politely and non-argumentatively.

... but playing at the same pitch level all the way from 60° to 80° f is a bit of a challenge.

[gocsick]

... but playing at the same pitch level all the way from 60° to 80° f is a bit of a challenge.

Sounds like I need to get one of my grad students to make the Bloke-o-matic. A robotic slide operator powered by AI that can be clamped onto the main slide.

[bloke]

Yeah, but I tend to lean towards owning instruments that - within their own tendencies - are not *wild, so basically the 60° experience involves pushing the main slide just about all the way in and the 80° experience involves pulling the main slide out about 1 and 3/4 inches, so I guess - at least on the instrument I've mostly been playing lately, which is a large B-flat - that's 3 and 1/2 inches difference in overall length.

Yes, playing under both situations the instrument ends up being warmed up some by holding and playing it, but - unlike a trumpet - we can never really warm up even half of a huge tuba's metal (or subsequently its column of air) to our own body temperature.
____________________
*As I choose to play C below the staff (on the huge B-flat tuba) with valves 1&3 - so as to enjoy better tuning on B-natural 2&4, my wildest tuning move is to move the first valve slide out the better part of 3 inches (for that C) to all the way in for the C an octave higher...
... it has taken me up until fairly recently to solidify my tuning choreography while playing this particular instrument, but I know where the center of each pitch is according to those that involve that slide, and if you've seen my third slide gadget over in the repair forum, I've worked out that issue of the typically flat fourth partial with the valve combination 2&3.
Some people actually compliment my pitch, but I suspect they have no idea how much I struggle and how much I work on it, and probably chalk it up to some non-existent easy-button thing called "talent"...
...nope: ' ain't go no.

[russiantuba]

My basement gets super cold in the winter—I use a space heater when I’m there that only helps a little. Summer it can be quite cold too if my wife runs the AC.

I use drones quite a bit. I can play a summer outdoor gig or a gig on a cold stage after sitting 42 minutes through the first 3 movements of Symphonie Fantastique. When I teach, I frequently tell students I tune on every note I play. I tune with those around me. “If the tuner says you are in tune and you are not matching those around you, then you are the one out of tune”

[bloke]

Your last sentence.. it's true, and pitch isn't absolute, and even A=440 is going to be in the 30s or well into the 40s if it functions as a third of a chord in a perfect interval tuning system.

This may not be everyone's strategy, but when I find myself playing in an ensembles where people mostly get together for fun, don't necessarily put in much practice time individually, and the pitch is everywhere, I just tend to try to put my pitch around 440 equal temperament basis and let whatever happens happen...

... but most of the time when I'm playing away from home I'm paid to be somewhere, and the objective is to get chords, unisons, fifths (as well as the most difficult to tune: 4ths) to ring, so I'm paying attention to all sorts of factors, including temperature, chord structure, whether or not there's a stretch-tuned piano on stage, and other issues which are not occurring to me while voice texting this post... and those around me are paying attention to all those same things, thankfully.

[bloke]

The topic seems to be deteriorating towards tuning in general rather than dealing with temperatures and playing huge tubas, so to the general topic of just playing a tuba in tune, a long time observation of mine is that particularly large tubas sound so round and resonant that it's really easy to fool oneself into believing that they are playing their tuba in tune, because it just sounds so darn pretty. It's definitely an obstacle and a barrier that has to be overcome to achieve really excellent intonation. Orchestral trombone sections tend to love F tubas and they salivate over cimbassos, because it's so easy to hear the pitch with smaller instruments, and that's what trombone sections are looking for is pitch.
We tend to be excited about playing our gigantic instruments, whereas trombone sections tend to be excited about us playing our smallest instruments.

[jtm]

*As I choose to play C below the staff (on the huge B-flat tuba) with valves 1&3 - so as to enjoy better tuning on B-natural 2&4, my wildest tuning move is to move the first valve slide out the better part of 3 inches (for that C) to all the way in for the C an octave higher...

On this new-to-me moderate size B-flat tuba, low B is great with 2,3,5, as is very low E, and I can tune 4th valve for C and F. I think, technically, that makes very low Eb a touch sharp with 4&5, but it’s still so much better than 1&4 that I’m happy. The 4th and 5th slides are both easy to reach to pull for low Eb if it’s worth the trouble.

[bloke]

Models really vary in these tuning tendencies, in addition to those which are much more basic, don't they?

I use fourth valve C an alternate, for slurs and fingering advantages.

When I pick out an instrument to own, it always has to have really accessible intonation, but beyond that micro tuning strategies depend on little things like that which you just mentioned.