Klarinet Archive - Posting 001115.txt from 1999/04

From: Richard Bush <rbushidioglot@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Tuners / not what they are cracked up to be
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 17:24:30 -0400

I firmly believe there is a place for electronic tuners. Individuals who are
silly enough to think that stopping the strobe wheel or spotting the needle
straight up and, when doing so, consider themselves in tune are missing the point.

Any common tuner displays pitches of a tempered scale. (I realize some tuners
can reflect different tuning systems.) A tempered scale is, more or less, what
a piano, an organ or other "fixed" pitch instruments are tuned to. The equally
tempered scale is also, in a general way, one of the goals of wind instrument makers.

Eliminating beats is always what it is about. Doing so requires an
understanding of the overtone series and how the tuning of these overtones
relate to common chords. Having some music theory and ear training play a
role. Starting with the simplest and most consonant chords, it is important
for all players to recognize when they are playing the third, to know if it is
major or minor, to know if they are playing a flatted seventh in the chord and
so forth. Stopping the needle dead up will not help make a simple major triad
sound in tune.

What I am eluding to is "JUST TUNING."

Where can a tuner be useful? It can tell the player if they are playing at an
A@-----. (Even this won't work without also taking a look at the
thermometer on the wall and adjusting or going with the flow of the ambient
air temperature.)

A tuner can tell general tuning tendencies of an instrument. It can show that
certain notes are flat (to a tempered scale), that they might be very out of
tune with the rest of the surrounding notes on a person's instrument.

A tuner can tell a player that they might be doing something wrong in their
own playing. Maybe they don't have an answer. Maybe they can't diagnose their
own ills, but the tuner will tell them where they play. Good teachers are
needed as participants in many such cases.

I would suggest reading up a bit on tuning. There is no perfect pitch. There
is no one blessed with perfect pitch. Pitches are an arbitrary thing we
invented to help create some sweet sounds out of what has historically been a
chaotic world of many different pitch standards.

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