Klarinet Archive - Posting 000371.txt from 2002/11

From: Gary Truesdail <gir@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] !!Re: [kl] Affect of Hall Acoustics on Pitch: A question
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 19:58:13 -0500

Right On!!!!!!!!
Lesson: We have to be flexible.

Worse yet: the hall is so big you cannot hear any reflected sound to
use for judgment as to your intonation or volume balance in relation to
all others and you cannot hear the person playing next to you.
Sometimes you just play what you feel is right and hope it really is.

GaryT

LeliaLoban@-----.com wrote:
>
> William Semple wrote,
> >Where I'm coming from is that I have played a few
> >church gigs, and staying in tune with an organ is a
> >nifty accomplishment.
>
> There's another reason for this problem besides the building's geometry.
> Most pipe organ builders specify that the instrument will play in tune with
> a=440 Hz at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Change the temperature much (and, with
> many pipe organs, change the humidity) and everything goes wicky-wacky.
> Drives organists nuts, because of course some pipes (depending on their size,
> composition and construction) change faster and more drastically than others,
> while the building temperature changes depending on when (or whether) someone
> remembered to turn on/off the heat/AC. More changes happen when the place
> fills up with human bodies. The bottom line is that in most buildings, you
> never have full use of the entire organ at any one time. That's *before* we
> start talking about the general state of disrepair, the leaky wind chest, the
> frayed leathers, the pipe way up in pigeon heaven that swallowed the dead
> bat, etc..
>
> When my uncle was resident organist at a large church, he used to leave notes
> taped to the console to warn visiting organists of a whole litany of
> potential nightmares. One was: Never pull certain stops in the late
> afternoon when the sun had been shining through a certain stained glass
> window for more than an hour, and wait until an hour after sundown to use
> those ranks, because the sunbeams heated those particular pipes enough to
> throw them out of pitch with the rest of the instrument. IMHO one of the
> main reasons pipe organs feature so many harmonic corroborating stops is that
> the complex overtones obscure the fact that the fundamental tones are all
> over the place. Church choirs usually cope with pitch variations easily
> enough, but bring in the instrumental players (especially the oboists) and
> welcome to Acoustical Hell.
>
> Lelia
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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