Tuning issue

DJ Sillito · Post by **DJ Sillito** » 29 May 2003 3:30 pm

I usually tune to a tempered tuning. Should I change anything if there is a horn in the band (trumpet, saxophone)? I don't think it should make a difference but any feedback would be a ppreciated.
thanks

------------------
Darren James Sillito
Carter D-10 8P 5K
Nashville 400, Transtubefex

Bobby Lee · Post by **Bobby Lee** » 29 May 2003 3:31 pm

No, they're probably more out of tune than you are.

Post by **Joey Ace** » 29 May 2003 3:58 pm

I don't think it would matter.
I'm moving this to PEDAL STEEL for more comments.

Jody Cameron · Post by **Jody Cameron** » 29 May 2003 5:04 pm

Amen to what Bobby Lee said. I've never figured out why horn players seem so out of tune a lot of the time, heck they can't even play a chord. They only have to worry about one note at a time! On the other hand, I've never played a horn so I guess I can't be too critical.

Paul King · Post by **Paul King** » 30 May 2003 4:56 am

I have sat down more than once with a horn playing in the band. I do not understand why they cannot hear that they were not in tune. I talked to a young man's father about it and suggested he use a tuner like the rest of us. I watched him and he could make it low or sharp depending on how he blowed it. Eventually he quit playing and to be honest, it was alright with me. I feel like a steel and a horn clash too much. I also do not like playing with an organ either but everyone has their own pet peeves...Paul King

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 30 May 2003 5:26 am

I would stick with your tuning if it's in tune with the rest of the band. Horn players who don't practice early on in their career with a band or backing tracks often don't get good ear training in relative pitch, because as was said above they can make it sharp or flat just by the way they play it. That's part of the appeal of "blue" notes, but even some famous jazz saxophonists hit some clinkers, at least to my ears. Imagine trying to play your steel blindfolded, with no band backing or open strings for reference.

Larry Bell · Post by **Larry Bell** » 30 May 2003 5:33 am

You're absolutely right, Paul. A woodwind (e.g., sax) or brass (e.g., trumpet) instrument allows the player to adjust pitch in much the same way as a vocalist. The challenges are similar as well.

------------------
Larry Bell - email: larry@larrybell.org - gigs - Home Page
2003 Fessenden S/D-12 8x8, 1969 Emmons S-12 6x6, 1971 Dobro, Standel and Peavey Amps

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 30 May 2003 7:14 am

I have a tenor sax player in my band, and I temper tune, but it's not because of the sax; it's because it sounds better to my ear regardless.

Having said that, I sometimes find that I sound more in tune when there's a PIANO in the band if I tune my C6 "straight up". But not always! It's still a bit of a mystery to me. I THOUGHT I'd learned to tune straight up in the studio when there's a piano but just yesterday, we found I sounded out of tune with the track until I tempered my C6 (flatting the 3rd, etc.) Now I'm thinking it has more to do with WHAT I play (positions used, how full the chords are -- 4 note or 5-note grabs, etc), rather than one tuning type being best at all times. Just my current 2cents

Ricky Davis · Post by **Ricky Davis** » 30 May 2003 11:07 am

I played with a Trombone player for years in the Dale Watson band....and I temper tune and you can hear for yourself wheather it works or not right here> http://www.mightyfinemusic.com/music_and_video.htm
There has been horns on the last three Dale Watson CD's and for the style that is present in these songs....I think it's wonderful...and all players have to work on intonation no matter how you tune.
Ricky

David Doggett · Post by **David Doggett** » 30 May 2003 11:38 am

Well, since I play steel, tenor sax, and piano, I might as well weigh in here. The final pitch for a horn is set by the lips (called the embouchure). Hitting the right keys or valves on a horn is like going to the right fret by sight on a steel. It will be close but not perfect without adjustment by ear. The key holes or valves are manufactured to be equal temperament (I think), but for good players the ear will tend to adjust the pitch to just intonation same as a vocalist, unless an ET instrument like a piano, guitar, or fretted bass is dominating the sound at the moment, in which case the ear might try to match that - it's not necessarily a conscious thing. A novice or sloppy horn player will not adjust the lips adequately and will play off pitch (not ET or JI), just like a novice steeler or fiddler.

As for the piano/steel clash Jim mentions, this is a bit of a mystery to me too. I don't think pianos are necessarily tuned exactly to ET. Piano tuners make some systematic adjustments away from ET on the higher keys, and maybe the lower ones too. Also of course, any given individual piano may have tuning inconsistencies. Beyond that, I would have thought an ET tuned steel would match a piano better than one tuned JI.

But there are mysterious psychological factors involved. We are used to hearing pianos tuned ET, so it is part of our expectations for the sound of the instrument, even its sound when playing with vocalists and other instruments that may be hitting JI pitches. But we expect a steel guitar to sing like the voice. When you play a chord on steel, the ear wants to hear the notes in that chord JI to each other on that instrument (like vocalists harmonizing), and that may be more important than matching the same notes a piano might be playing at the same time.

Listening to music is not purely passive, but is an active process in which the listener's own brain participates and can make us hear things differently than the meters might indicate. In the same way, black milk tastes bad unless you are blindfolded (and black Emmons sound better), and the moon or sun look bigger near the horizon than when overhead.

But I'm just guessing. As usual I really don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

Bob Hoffnar · Post by **Bob Hoffnar** » 30 May 2003 11:55 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Now I'm thinking it has more to do with WHAT I play (positions used, how full the chords are -- 4 note or 5-note grabs, etc), rather than one tuning type being best at all times. Just my current 2cents
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Jim,
You better be careful because with that way of thinking all us forum guys are going to need to practice and learn how to play the pedalsteel rather than just blab endlessly on our computers !

Bob

Ron Randall · Post by **Ron Randall** » 30 May 2003 1:00 pm

I don't think pianos are necessarily tuned exactly to ET. Piano tuners make some systematic adjustments away from ET on the higher keys, and maybe the lower ones too.

Yes, it is so. (man I was surprised)

"When one measures a piano that has been tuned by a skilled tuner, something interesting will be discovered. The middle of the piano will be close to perfect, while somewhere about the second octave above middle C, the notes will gradually become sharper, until at the high C this sharpening may be as high as 20 to 30 cents! Also there will be some flattening of the notes in the lower octaves. Shown is a plot of actual measurements of a piano tuned by a skilled tuner, along with a curve resulting from the average of many such measurements:

This affect is known as the "stretching" of the upper and lower octaves. It is due to the fact that a string does not necessarily vibrate at perfect natural

harmonics. The harmonics of a vibrating string tend to be sharp of the natural harmonic series. This becomes more pronounced as the string is made shorter or thicker. When the tuner is tuning octave intervals up the keyboard, they tune for the best sound, compromising the beat between the string fundamentals and the beat between the octave partial of the lower note to the fundamental of the upper. This produces a slightly sharp octave interval between the two strings. This slight adjust accumulates towards the high and low end. If a piano is tuned to a perfect scale top to bottom, the beats produced between partials of the high strings clash. A piano tuned with the upper and lower octaves stretched just sounds better."

complete article and graph of piano tuning is on http://www.precisionstrobe.com/ look in applications.

Take 2 aspirin before reading the whole article.

hope this adds to the thread

Ron[This message was edited by Ron Randall on 30 May 2003 at 02:03 PM.][This message was edited by Ron Randall on 30 May 2003 at 02:05 PM.]

Mike Delaney · Post by **Mike Delaney** » 30 May 2003 4:27 pm

Ron-You just hit the nail on the head. "Tuned by a skilled tuner".

Jeff A. Smith · Post by **Jeff A. Smith** » 30 May 2003 6:36 pm

When the tuner is tuning octave intervals up the keyboard, they tune for the best sound, compromising the beat between the string fundamentals and the beat between the octave partial of the lower note to the fundamental of the upper.

Ron, just a little technical correction:

There is no beating between the fundamentals of one note and that of its octave. Beat rates exist between "coinciding harmonics" (or partials, if you prefer). What in the physical structure of the upper string could vibrate in a way that coincides with a frequency lower than what its fundamental (total length) can produce?

The lowest and most basic beat rate a tuner hears when tuning octaves is that between the lower string's second partial (that string dividing in half) and the fundamental of the octave above it.

Although that itself produces some stretching, due to "inharmonicity," most tuners will go a little farther in sharpening octaves by utilizing other tests which slightly compromise the pure octave coinciding harmonic (2:1) in a sharp direction.

Just as the notes get progressively sharp as one goes up the keyboard, they get more flat as one goes down. The main priority is to eliminate as many beats in musically important intervals as possible, and leave the others so that they beat progressively faster as one goes up, and slower as one goes down; nothing standing out too much from what's around it.

The less the quality of the piano, the more deviations from a set formula should be made.

[This message was edited by Jeff A. Smith on 30 May 2003 at 07:40 PM.]

Ron Randall · Post by **Ron Randall** » 30 May 2003 11:08 pm

Jeff,

Beats me!

I was quoting the article at this website, http://www.precisionstrobe.com/ look in applications for the whole article.

Ron

David L. Donald · Post by **David L. Donald** » 31 May 2003 12:40 am

If the horn player is any good he will use his mouth, slide or hand in the horn (Fhorn) to tune each note to it's environment.
If not just shoot him and put him out of your misery.
(I have played trombone and sax)

Jeff A. Smith · Post by **Jeff A. Smith** » 31 May 2003 5:41 am

look in applications for the whole article.

Ron-

Thanks.

Yes, I did that before I posted earlier. He certainly seems like a knowledgeable guy. However, unless the statement in question is meant in some less than obvious way, that would be the first time I've ever come across someone explaining octave tuning in that manner. It may be due to the fact that this fellow isn't himself a piano tuner, or, just an inadvertence on his part. All of the books and instruction I've received only speak about beats being created when two partials of nearly the same frequency are present -- not two as far apart as an octave. If there is some wierd way a beat rate is created by what he describes, it's something that isn't mentioned in any of the standard material that I've come across.

Typical explanations are as follows:

Herman Von Helmholz:

"Tones of the same, or of nearly the same pitch, which therefore affect the same nerve fibers, do not produce a sensation which is the sum of the two they would have separately excited, but new and peculiar phenomena arises which we call interference, when caused by two perfectly equal simple tones, and beats when due to two nearly equal simple tones."

In addition, he says:

"The number of beats in a given time is equal to the difference of the number of vibrations executed by the two tones in the same key."

The fellow who wrote the Peterson Strobe article seemed aware of this when talking about near unisons (such as A440 and A441), but not when he discusses octaves.

I thought he might be referring to something when a piano is tuned electronically, and partials monitored visually, but I tend to doubt that. I may be wrong. It would be a good question for the author. Speaking from the viewpoint of someone who tunes by ear, I can say that the audible beat rates used in piano tuning all derive from "coinciding partials" of the kind I describe. No ear tuner hears a beat created by the two fundamentals (if that were possible)and compromises between that and the beat created by the second partial of the lower note and the fundamental of the higher. Every beat rate is heard associated with a single pitch. Two fundamentals (even those of octaves) are of two distinct pitches, and they are too far apart to themselves create a beat rate audible to the human ear.

Going by the seat of my pants, with no theoretical backing, I suppose there could be some wierd vibration set up strictly by the fundamentals of an octave. However, I've never heard reference made to something like that, and it's not a part of how an aural tuner is taught to tune octaves. I personally don't believe it would be significantly audible, if it did exist. The lowest pitch I've ever isolated associated with beats in an octave is that of the 2/1 coinciding partial.

I know, Ron, that you're just reporting on what is said in an article. I'm just giving a little further comment.

I'm open to any other information on this.

[This message was edited by Jeff A. Smith on 31 May 2003 at 07:06 AM.]

Wayne Cox · Post by **Wayne Cox** » 31 May 2003 6:40 am

What I have to say here is not very technical. I worked for 5 years with the great Sax player, Ace Cannon. I seem to remember that the older and more worn his reeds became,the more he had to adjust his mouthpiece to keep from being flat. Kind of like us when we have dead strings. If this is wrong,erroneous,or useless,please feel free to correct me. I am not a Sax player!
~~W.C.~~

David Doggett · Post by **David Doggett** » 31 May 2003 10:46 am

Yes, as reeds wear they will flatten a little in pitch, but mine usually get a nick or crack and have to be tossed before they change much in pitch. A good horn player will tune up to the piano or a meter every time he puts the mouthpiece on. a sloppy player might just put the mouthpiece to its usual mark and start playing. But temperature and humidity affect the horn and the other instruments in the group. So you need to tune where you place the mouth piece every time you start playing. That's standard procedure in concert bands.

David Doggett · Post by **David Doggett** » 31 May 2003 10:54 am

To answer DJ's original question. If you tune JI, you should not change for horns. If they are good they will play by their ears to JI, the same as good vocalists sing to JI. However, if a piano or ET guitar dominates the sound, both vocalists and horn players may gravitate to ET, at least on some notes or chords - the same as a good steel guitarist will also do with his bar to the extent possible.

If the horn player has a bad ear, it ain't gone matter how you tune, you're in trouble. In my experience bands always sound as bad as the worst member. That's usually me, so I don't worry about this much.