Klarinet Archive - Posting 000922.txt from 2003/06

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Humidity
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 18:50:51 -0400

On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 12:43:58 -0400, melzerb46@-----.net said:

> Hello,
>
> This is gonna be a difficult question.
>
> Is it possible for anyone to say how much humidity affects your sound?
> I know it can make you either flat or sharp. Is it really affective,
> or not too much?

Temperature has a much more crucial effect on pitch. But humidity
creates intonation problems in orchestras in which the string players
use non-synthetic strings, because gut absorbs moisture, and the effect
is to make the strings more massive, and thus make them play flat --
unless you keep tuning them up. Timpani head skins are also vulnerable.

Reeds too hold moisture more in a humid atmosphere -- they don't dry out
at all out of your mouth -- and if they're newish and actually waterlog,
that has a possibly flattening but also deadening effect on the sound.

I once had a terrible time trying to record a programme in a cold damp
church with a sharpish piano.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE http://classicalplus.gmn.com/artists
tel/fax 01865 553339

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