Klarinet Archive - Posting 000458.txt from 1998/09

From: Matt Palasik <mattp169@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Re: Pitch standards
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 19:07:35 -0400

Is a=440 at 72 degrees the same as a=440 at 80 degrees? Also even an
electronic device is affected by temperature. Not the device that makes
the pitch but the pitch itself. The device s always the same but the
sound waves are effected once they are vibrating they are effected by
the teperature at density of the air. But i agreee the electronic device
is more reliable thanan instrument. But back to my first question. If
a@-----.Then
does teperature have anything to do with the standard. Because I read
in Woodwind quarterly that the london conference established it not
ioonly by vibration and teperature but location. It said it was 440
vibrations at a temperture of 72 degrres in a room in london. SO then
if its 72 degrees in the hall in my school will 440 vibrations be the
same as this room in london. I would think so. I believge the standard
does matter according to temperature only when you take the standard of
the spacing of pitches. If an instrument is designed to play n tune
with itself when it plays concert a at 440hz in a room that is 72
degrees and if the temperature changes the vibrations of concert A
changes also given that all oter parameters (embochure, instrument etc)
remain constant, then the relationship between concert A and all other
notes should change proportional. SO when the room is at 72 a=440 a#=476
2/3 b@-----. then if the temp changes and all other variables
remain constabnnt to make a@-----. The pitch
of each note changes and the spacing between half steps also increases
or decreases. but if you have to shorten the barral and make other
changes to an instrument to get it to play a=440 when the room is 87
degrees then the tuning of the half steps will change also and because
the instrument was not designed to play a=440 at 87 degreesthe tuning of
the halfs steps will not be equal throughout the range of the
instrument.
So the temperatureis part of the standard when in relationship to the
standard, well not standard but physics of the half steps.

According to the physics each half step shoud be a+a/12 apart from the
next note where a is the frequency of the relative pitch. so if a=440
then a# should be 476 2/3.
Now when the instrument makers decide where to place tone holes etc,
they are unmoveable and if on a clarinet you change the lenght of the
barrel to change the frequency of concert A he relationship of the half
steps doesnot change throughout the range of the clarinet.

SO shouldnt he standard be different according to temperature. Like if
the teperature is 95 degrees the instrument should play concert A=437 or
whatever?

charette@-----.org wrote:
>
> Ed said:
> >I'm having some trouble understanding what you are saying here, or perhaps
> >why you are saying it. When a physical apparatus, such as a musical
> >instrument, is involved, temperature always comes into play. When the
> >Fox company makes a bassoon, they say that the pitch level is something
> >like A=440 or A=442 *at a certain temperature,* such as 70 or 72 degrees
> >Fahrenheit. And, if the instrument must be played at 60 degrees, or 90
> >degrees, that its pitch level will change seems so obvious as to not need
> >to be stated.
> >
> >I just received a letter from the Heckel company in Germany, in which they
> >responded to my request for information about my instrument. They told me
> >that it was made in 1923, and that it originally was designed to play in
> >tune at A@-----. Also, those notorious pitched percussion
> >instruments which have been discussed are also intended to play at their
> >nominal frequency, whatever that may be, but only at a specified
> >temperature. Now, the situation is made even more complicated due to the
> >fact that the reason an instrument changes temperature is due to a change
> >in the temperature of the ambient air. And, those changes also affect the
> >frequency of musical sounds.
> >
> >So, how is it that you feel that temperature never comes into the play?
>
> Ed,
> nothing here implies any _standard_. What it says is that if you finger
> what should be a concert A (which in 1923 _was_ defined as 435 Hz) and
> produce a note when it is a certain temperature the frequency will be 435
> Hz. At any other temperature it may not be a _standard_ A; it may be something
> else.
>
> So temperature comes into play where you're trying to produce a concert A,
> but not if you're describing it. If I have some highly accurate device, not
> temperature sensitive, that produces a frequency of 440 Hz, and you have
> a device that _is_ temperature sensitive and drifts when trying to produce
> the same frequency, which one would you use as an absoulte reference
> frequency?
>
> Mark Charette@-----.org
>
> PS - I hope I'm not boring too many people. Standards are something I did with
> the American national Standards Institue and the International Standards
> Organization, and I truly believe that understanding this difference with
> distiction is important to the real question - why do we keep changing the
> note that we tune to?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------

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