 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: ruben
Date: 2025-06-22 13:44
We traditionally tune to A-440 or 442, I imagine because all string instruments have an A string (is there another reason?) The only trouble is that when we play an A on the clarinet-our B, of course-it tends to be a tad flat. I heard the Duke Ellington orchestra for years and never once saw them tune up!
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Ed
Date: 2025-06-22 14:56
I think that some groups use A because they believe the note is "the" tuning note, forgetting that it is really a string thing. Playing concert A is not a great note on trumpet or trombone either.
I suppose the Ellington band may tune prior to the gig, but most players know where there instrument plays in tune and then adjust.
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2025-06-22 15:42
Tuning is essential to the concept of ensemble playing (playing together). If you are at all familiar with where the notes on YOUR horn lie, then you KNOW where your "A" lies within the panoply of notes. Therefore it should not matter which note to which you tune. Concert "A" is still a more neutral note for most other winds as well, bassoon, oboe, horn.
But for God's sake TUNE FIRST, before a warmup tune or exercise. I hate the practice of throwing out something to play BEFORE tuning. This concept establishes "OUT OF TUNE" in your ear before you even have a fighting chance.
And no, your instrument is not already tuned at the factory.
.............Paul Aviles
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2025-06-22 16:34
And that upper register B (or C on an A clarinet) being a full length of the instrument note means it's the most inflexible note on the instrument.
Some directors and players insist in tuning solely to that one single note instead of tuning to another note of the D minor triad (or Bb Major triad in concert or military bands) and wondering why they're out of tune elsewhere if they've pulled the barrel out to the point of it falling off when insanely tuning down to 440Hz when it's 30°C when there's no fixed pitch instruments involved.
It's easy with flutes, oboes and soprano and tenor saxes as that note is in the left hand and therefore more tuneable than a note using a much longer length of tubing. But with clarinets, just pick other notes in the triad employing LH notes to tune to and use your ear.
A 440Hz is just a starting point and not always an achievable goal depending on the temperature.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: ruben
Date: 2025-06-22 16:36
Thanks Chris P: enlightening, as usual!
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: kdk
Date: 2025-06-22 16:55
Paul Aviles wrote:
> But for God's sake TUNE FIRST, before a warmup tune or
> exercise. I hate the practice of throwing out something to
> play BEFORE tuning. This concept establishes "OUT OF TUNE" in
> your ear before you even have a fighting chance.
>
The obvious problem is that when time can't be wasted in a school rehearsal that has to fit within the very narrow confines of a bell schedule, there may not be time for a pre-warmup tuning, since tuning will have to be done again after the instruments are warmed up.
I prefer when conducting a student ensemble to tune without a "warm up" exercise, then choose the first piece we rehearse to include some kind of sustained, harmonically clear texture and use that for adjustments as the instruments warm up.
Karl
>
>
> And no, your instrument is not already tuned at the factory.
>
That's not what they told me at the factory. Do you mean they lied to me???
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Author: kdk
Date: 2025-06-22 17:21
The band I play in, and the student band I co-conduct, both tune to Bb, not A - mostly for the benefit of the brass instruments, for most of which Bb is the natural fundamental. This can cause some bizarre effects when the oboist (who usually also plays elsewhere orchestrally) forgets and plays an A instead of Bb and chaos follows for a few seconds.
Some orchestras I play in give an A for the strings and a Bb for the winds. That works as long as the oboist's A and Bb are in tune with each other.
Backstage at Philadelphia's Academy of Music as long ago as the 1960s, prior to a rehearsal or concert there was always an electronic A sounding and most of the tuning was done to that A, so that the actual tuning ritual with the oboe A was something of a formality, just to confirm that nothing had changed on the way out to the stage. But, to ruben's point, it WAS an A.
There's really no substitute for listening as we play and constantly adjusting to the changing pitch environment. The tuning note gets you close to begin with, but instruments are not in tune with themselves (yes, the factory lied!) and some instruments, especially among non-pro players, have pronounced pitch discrepancies between registers or dynamic ranges and those need to be adjusted to regardless of the initial tuning.
Karl
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Author: donald
Date: 2025-06-22 18:40
No pro player I've ever worked with "just tuned to one note". Especially in the days of clip on tuners etc (some Bassoonists I know leave this on to use it during performance even) there are always ample opportunities for little small tuning "check ups". This is not always to get your instrument "perfectly in tune" but to establish/check reference (if I'm in tune now, I'll be a bit sharper by the time I get to that solo... or "if my B is in tune now, that means my G will be flat in bar 60" kind of stuff).
But my ideal?
I get students to tune to "play middle C and slur a leap up to G" in the lower register, then the same thing an octave higher.
Myself? In an orchestra I play B, then check the F# below.... then wait for strings to get busy- listen for all the E strings in the Violin section and test my top line F#.
As for student ensembles, either tell them that "15min early is ON TIME" so they can warm up and tune at the start of the rehearsal, or play the first piece without tuning so they can warm up (if pre rehearsal warm up is not possible, which is frequently the case), then tune the group, then play the first piece again saying "oh yes that's much better" etc
As for "tune up BEFORE warming up". Ha, if every note on your instrument is 15c flat because it's winter and you haven't warmed up, then your student can get a hack saw and shorten their top joint so they're in tune, right?
Late for rehearsal so you're only just in time? Put the barrel in your pants pocket and your top joint fits in the chest pocket of a suit jacket, another good reason to look for a dead mans suit at the thrift store....
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Author: ruben
Date: 2025-06-22 19:10
Donald: When the weather's cold, for a good long while your bell will be colder than the rest of the instrument and thus the notes at the bottom of the lower body will be flatter than the rest.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2025-06-22 19:26
Ed: the Ellington band had Johnny Hodges and nobody played better in tune than him. So the other members of the band used him as a reference.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: kdk
Date: 2025-06-22 20:48
ruben wrote:
> Donald: When the weather's cold, for a good long while your
> bell will be colder than the rest of the instrument and thus
> the notes at the bottom of the lower body will be flatter than
> the rest.
>
I wonder if those last couple of inches at the bottom of the air column would affect the instrument's overall pitch that much.
But my understanding in any case has always been that warming the outside in your hands, under a jacket close to your body, etc.) simply avoided the internal stress of having the bore expanding (from warm breath) against still-cold wood on the outside. If this is the case, the bore still needs to warm up as you play, bringing the cold-bore pitch up only gradually even if you've warmed the outside.
Karl
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Author: Burt
Date: 2025-06-22 21:01
I believe in tuning to the clarinet "G". First, the second line "G" to adjust at the barrel, then "G" at the top of the staff to adjust between the joints, then "G" below the staff to make the (usually unnecessary) adjustment at the bell.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2025-06-22 21:48
Burt wrote:
> I believe in tuning to the clarinet "G". First, the second line
> "G" to adjust at the barrel, then "G" at the top of the staff
> to adjust between the joints, then "G" below the staff to make
> the (usually unnecessary) adjustment at the bell.
This is fine, if you like to tune this way, for home practice. But a band tuning at the beginning of a rehearsal shouldn't need to wait for an entire clarinet section to go through these steps. And then, once done, there's the rest of the band to tune. Even less would an orchestra want to wait for three or four clarinets to complete this routine.
It may be worthwhile to tune while everyone is noodling around before the tuning "A" is played to start the rehearsal - using a tuner. I carry around a small clip-on contact mic that plugs into my tuner to use before rehearsals or during intermissions if I'm testing new equipment to make sure I'm within adjusting range. The mic doesn't pick up the rest of the instruments warming up.
Karl
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Author: hans
Date: 2025-06-22 22:30
Karl,
Thank you for the laugh:
"> And no, your instrument is not already tuned at the factory."
>
"That's not what they told me at the factory. Do you mean they lied to me???"
Chris P,
Thank you for your wonderful insights.
Regards,
Hans
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Author: ruben
Date: 2025-06-23 09:45
The old-timers that were with the top European orchestras tell me that "perfect" intonation is much more of an obsession with players these days than it was during their heydey. My explanation: the fact that electronic tuners and recordings are the reference.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: JTJC
Date: 2025-06-23 12:24
The tuning in a great number of 'old time' orchestral recordings isn't great, quite appalling in some cases.
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2025-06-23 15:48
If you listen to some recordings done by the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, it seems tuning between and even within sections was optional.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: davyd
Date: 2025-06-24 21:01
Maybe our instruments were tuned at the factory, maybe not. But different instrument were made in different factories. Maybe not all factories tuned to the same standard?
The concert band I play in: during the previous director's tenure, we all tuned to F. The current director tunes each player individually, using whatever note is "best" for their instrument.
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2025-06-24 22:44
I remember a band director using F as a tuning note. Bad news for alto or bari saxes as they tuned to their upper register D which is naturally sharp, then high D which (if sax is their 2nd, 3rd or 4th instrument or they're not that experienced) is also sharp and flexible and low D which is inflexible (and often sharp) and little affected by cranking the mouthpiece on or off.
F is a better note for tenors and sopranos to tune to as it's their G (and lower register G being the best note for saxes to tune to). Also with oboe, F is a bad note depending which fingering the player uses as standard.
Whenever playing in a sax 4tet, I use a wide spread Bb chord to tune to as that employs LH notes only - both bari and tenor playing a G (Bb and F a 5th apart), then alto playing B (D a 6th above the tenor) and soprano playing C (Bb a 6th above the alto).
I was playing basset horn last night and as there's no oboes in Mozart's Requiem, I had to give my upper register E for the orchestra.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: David Eichler
Date: 2025-06-25 04:54
My recollection from playing in wind ensembles was using concert b flat as a tuning note, with which I used both throat G and lower clarion C to tune. Doesn't help if you are only getting concert A, but thought I would at least mention it, since people have brought ensembles other than concert orchestras.
Post Edited (2025-06-25 04:56)
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2025-06-25 16:49
If there's a piano involved, everyone tunes to that, no? But I occasionally hear, even in professional performances, pianos out of tune with themselves. How do other ensemble members deal with that? I've heard mistuned piano accompaniment affect singers who have perfect pitch.
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2025-06-25 16:55
There are always those players with perfect pitch and anything other than 440Hz screws with them.
If there's no piano or fixed pitch instruments involved, it's best to tune to the conditions. On Monday just gone, I had to pull the long crook out on my basset horn to play down to 440Hz as it was so warm. On my A clarinet (early Series 9) for the other piece we were rehearing, I had a 67mm barrel in and had to pull that out a lot to bring the throat notes down - I think I'll just dig out and use a 69mm barrel next time.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2025-06-25 22:33
Quote:
If there's a piano involved, everyone tunes to that, no? But I occasionally hear, even in professional performances, pianos out of tune with themselves. How do other ensemble members deal with that? I've heard mistuned piano accompaniment affect singers who have perfect pitch.
In chamber groups with piano, yes, you almost always take the A from the piano. If there's a piano in the orchestra, it's presumably tuned to whatever standard the orchestra likes. But I've seen oboists go over and check the piano with their tuner before giving the A just to be sure.
The perfect pitch thing is funny. I've had students with absolute pitch who play rather out of tune (out of tune with an ensemble but also out of tune with a tuner). I've met very few people with tuner-like absolute pitch. Pierre Boulez had that sort of pitch: he could tell how many cents sharp or flat someone was playing, tune chords incredibly precisely, etc. It must have been a combination of absolute pitch and very thorough ear training to develop it to its fullest potential.
I had a classmate with very fine absolute pitch. We were playing in an historical ensemble tuned to 430. I assumed it would mess with her ears, so I asked her about it. She said for the first rehearsal it was a little weird. But from then on, it was fine and didn't bother her. So I don't know what to believe. It seems to me there might be something performative behind people making a fuss about tuning to 442 or slightly out-of-tune pianos.
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2025-06-26 01:22
Sioned Williams said in a documentary that Pierre Boulez called her out on one of her notes being slightly out of tune when playing one of his works. I doubt the audience and many other around her would've noticed, but he definitely did.
https://youtu.be/nmQrkZi8qes?si=H4OVESmVTwtr6lFV&t=2996
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2025-06-26 03:56
Quote:
Sioned Williams said in a documentary that Pierre Boulez called her out on one of her notes being slightly out of tune when playing one of his works. I doubt the audience and many other around her would've noticed, but he definitely did.
Yes, he was incredible. He could do the same thing not only with his own music but with whatever he was conducting (and he could explain precisely how a particular pitch fit into the orchestra, its position in the tone row, etc.). He heard serial music with the same fluency as someone with great ears hears tonal music: a complete understanding of the system itself.
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2025-06-26 09:32
Yes, it makes sense if you pretty much have to tune with the A and not in a position to ask for another note, etc. It makes sense to do what is possible under the circumstances.
No, it doesn't make sense because it makes more sense to use other notes and more than one note if possible. If you are not depended on e.g. a large orchestra where you are just a "pawn" there and have no say, then it's better to tune with other note/notes.
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Author: ruben
Date: 2025-06-26 10:18
brycon: I knew many people that worked with Boulez here in Paris and in London and they made the same affirmations. The down side: he didn't believe in emotion. His pleasure in music was purely the intellectual challenge of it. During rehearsals, he would never comment on the poetic significance of a piece or phrase, for instance. -the anti-Bernstein, so to speak!
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2025-06-26 10:20
clarinetbass: A composer I knew suggested tuning to the tonic, the dominant and the third of the key you are about to play in. ..maybe in an ideal world (not quite the one we live in).
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2025-06-26 10:29
>> clarinetbass: A composer I knew suggested tuning to the tonic, the dominant and the third of the key you are about to play in. ..maybe in an ideal world (not quite the one we live in). <<
Sure but that's also a very specific circumstance.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2025-06-26 17:08
clarnibass wrote:
> No, it doesn't make sense because it makes more sense to use
> other notes and more than one note if possible. If you are not
> depended on e.g. a large orchestra where you are just a "pawn"
> there and have no say, then it's better to tune with other
> note/notes.
I don't really understand the reference to other "notes" except in the case where the player is in the habit of tuning in several places - i.e. the mouthpiece, the barrel, the middle joint and the bell. If you're tuning the entire clarinet as one piece, I don't understand why "tuning" each of several notes doesn't just throw the last note you tuned back out-of-tune.
We tune to an ensemble-wide standard (sometimes, indeed, two of them when both an A is given for the strings and a Bb is given for the winds) so that everyone starts within adjusting range of each other. Good players understand that ongoing adjustments will still be needed.
Am I misreading the "other note/notes" idea?
Karl
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