tuning accuracy

[Lleanne]

Hi

I can't find the answer to this question on the forum... which is,

Using a chromatic tuner, what sort of deviation is detectable? Or should I be looking for all the notes to be 'dead on'?

 

My C row is pretty well perfect, but a few of the reeds on the LH G row of my Anglo are about 2 (whatever the tuner is calibrated in!) flat, which I don't notice playing by myself. But I need to play with other people.

 

Should I be getting this fixed, or isn't this a significant deviation?

 

Thanks!

Lleanne

[Patrick King]

Hi

I can't find the answer to this question on the forum... which is,

Using a chromatic tuner, what sort of deviation is detectable? Or should I be looking for all the notes to be 'dead on'?

 

My C row is pretty well perfect, but a few of the reeds on the LH G row of my Anglo are about 2 (whatever the tuner is calibrated in!) flat, which I don't notice playing by myself. But I need to play with other people.

 

Should I be getting this fixed, or isn't this a significant deviation?

 

Thanks!

Lleanne

 

Wow, I think I might let someone else answer your question.

 

But, I didn't know you could tune concertinas . All my keys are only just a tiny little bit flat, but I know that's so when I play faster, it's more in tune, not too sharp.

 

Cheers,

Patrick

[Anglo-Irishman]

My C row is pretty well perfect, but a few of the reeds on the LH G row of my Anglo are about 2 (whatever the tuner is calibrated in!) flat, which I don't notice playing by myself. But I need to play with other people.

 

Should I be getting this fixed, or isn't this a significant deviation?

 

Lleanne,

I have a very old Bandoneon that sounds very well in tune with itself, but in old concert pitch, so I checked it with an electronic tuner to see exactly what pitch it was in. As a side effect, I noticed that some notes were measureably flat in relation to the majority, although I could detect no "off-tune-ness" when these notes were used in melodies or chords.

 

Now I've just checked my 30-button anglo, and notice that some notes that sound OK measure slightly flat on it, too.

 

My thoughts on this are as follows:

Bandoneons and Anglos are in principle diatonic instruments. They are rarely played far from their home keys, so they don't need the equal temperament that fully chromatic instruments like pianos, English concertinas and Duets need, in order to play in all keys.

 

Another instrument, of mine, the autoharp, comes in chromatic and diatonic flavours. The chromatics are tuned in equal temperament, but the diatonics - which are equivalent to a one- or two-row Anglo concertina - are often tuned "sweet", i.e. some notes are tweaked to make the intervals sound optimal in those one or two keys. The drawback of "sweet" tuning is that it clashes with equal-tempered instruments.

 

I sometimes wonder if Anglos, or at least 20-button Anglos, are (or once were) deliberately "sweet tuned" to give a more "comfortable" effect in their home keys. Standard electronic tuners are in equal temperament, so some notes of the "sweet" scale would regster as a few cents off. Diatonic autoharpers deliberately tune certain strings a couple of cents "off centre" by the tuner.

 

Can any tuning experts out there refute or confirm this supposition?

 

Cheers,

John

[TomB-R]

Does it sound ok to you Lleanne?

 

Your tuner is probably telling you these notes are 2 cents flat, (cent =1/100 semitone) so that's 1/50 of a semitone out.

 

If you are going to play with stringed instruments particularly fiddles, or whistles(!!!), in the real world there's no chance that they'll be more accurate than +- 2 cents!

 

I'd have thought it nothing to worry about.

Tom

Edited June 8, 2009 by TomB-R

[Stephen Chambers]

My C row is pretty well perfect, but a few of the reeds on the LH G row of my Anglo are about 2 (whatever the tuner is calibrated in!) flat, which I don't notice playing by myself. But I need to play with other people.

 

Should I be getting this fixed, or isn't this a significant deviation?

If I was tuning an instrument, I'd realistically be aiming for +/- 1 cent accuracy, which is as accurate as most electronic tuners are anyway, but -2 cents is pretty close. In any case, the pitch of a reed is going to waver, and vary slightly depending on how much pressure you apply to it, etc.

 

My thoughts on this are as follows:

Bandoneons and Anglos are in principle diatonic instruments. They are rarely played far from their home keys, so they don't need the equal temperament that fully chromatic instruments like pianos, English concertinas and Duets need, in order to play in all keys.

It's a vastly complicated subject, and one that's been discussed here numerous times before, but basically yes, except that some temperaments allow both sweeter tuning and chromatic playing.

 

Try taking a look at the threads that come up in searches on meantone and temperament.

 

Diatonic autoharpers deliberately tune certain strings a couple of cents "off centre" by the tuner.

They should maybe be adjusting some of them by as much as 20 cents - or more!

[Lleanne]

Thanks for the helpful reply... I'll take a look at the threads on meantone & temperament.

It's a G/C anglo, but most tunes I need to play seem to be in D! So perhaps that's not helping.

 

Yes, it sounds fairly ok to me played by itself, but the lower notes are distinctly flat when played alongside an accordion.

 

The amount of pressure applied doesn't seem to alter the sound of most of the reeds - not like back in my recorder playing days, when more air would 'up' the pitch. So I'm surprised by Patrick's post, saying that his instrument gets sharper with more volume - mine doesn't.

Lleanne

[TomB-R]

Yes, it sounds fairly ok to me played by itself, but the lower notes are distinctly flat when played alongside an accordion.

 

Accordions generally, or one in particular? They are often tuned a little sharp in order to sound "brighter."

[Boney]

I'm surprised by Patrick's post, saying that his instrument gets sharper with more volume - mine doesn't.

Actually, the reeds should drop in pitch slightly if you play loud enough.

[Patrick King]

...The amount of pressure applied doesn't seem to alter the sound of most of the reeds - not like back in my recorder playing days, when more air would 'up' the pitch. So I'm surprised by Patrick's post, saying that his instrument gets sharper with more volume - mine doesn't.

Lleanne

 

I didn't say that my notes get sharper when I play with more volume. I meant that my notes are a tiny bit flat when I play slowly; but when I play with a bit more higher tempo, my notes are right on pitch. You can't hear the difference much, though.

 

Cheers,

Patrick

[Simon H]

Since getting my wheatstone treble a couple of years ago I've done a fair bit of work tuning and investigating reed characteristics. I don't consider myself any sort of expert in this but I have found the tool AP Tuner 3 (free) very instructive when looking at the characteristics and harmonics etc of individual reeds. The two graphs below are annotated screenshots from AP tuner 3 of the A4 reeds of my EC, both push and draw. As you will see from the first graph the draw reed is about 2 cents sharp. The second graph shows how much this really makes a difference in real life, the pitch changes quite significantly over quite limited changes in bellows pressure. So as you play softly or loudly in line with the requirements of any particular piece of music it is quite clear, (at least for this instrument) that the pitch will vary quite considerably from the target pitch. It is in fact a real challenge to play a note to pitch for more than a very few seconds.

 

I have used this dynamic display to look at the note characteristics in tunes played different ways, and its fascinating to see how much using expression in bellows control can affect pitch. For playing slow airs for example, I think the changes in pitch in sustained notes and use of varying pressure are a large part of what adds emotion and colour to a tune.

 

To summarise - best if the reeds are tuned as close as possible, but in actual playing the pitch will vary quite considerably through expressive control of the bellows.

 

Simon

 

 

[Lleanne]

Thanks Simon,

That's really interesting & you're absolutely right - I've just been playing around with the tuner at the various bellows pressures, and with just a thin thread of sound, the notes (especially the particularly troublesome ones) are right on pitch. But they go flat quite swiftly, as the pressure increases. It doesn't seem to be a gradual curve - it flattens & then stays at about the same pitch.

 

This ties in with my noticing that I sound flat, heard against other boxes. I tend to play really loudly, just to be able to hear myself.

Lleanne

[Stephen Chambers]

I've just been playing around with the tuner at the various bellows pressures, and with just a thin thread of sound, the notes (especially the particularly troublesome ones) are right on pitch. But they go flat quite swiftly, as the pressure increases.

That's what I was getting at when I said "the pitch of a reed is going to waver, and vary slightly depending on how much pressure you apply to it" - it sounds like whoever tuned it may not have been applying quite enough pressure on those reeds then, but it's insignificant compared with how sharp the tremolo reeds of an accordion are tuned.

 

This ties in with my noticing that I sound flat, heard against other boxes. I tend to play really loudly, just to be able to hear myself.

If you're meaning accordions when you say "boxes" (it can also mean "concertinas"), then the main problem is quite definitely how they are tuned. The sound of an accordion is usually made up of more than one reed playing together, and commonly one of those reeds is sharp by anything between 5 and 25 cents, to create a tremolo sound, but that tends to drag the perceived pitch of the accordion sharp, to a lesser or greater degree. This can be a big problem for wind and stringed instrument players, if they tune to the accordion instead of the concertina, because you are then going to seem "flat" to them - though in reality, you're then the only one playing at concert pitch!

 

In any case, some accordions are actually tuned slightly sharp overall - to make them sound brighter, or for countries where pitch is sharper.

Edited June 9, 2009 by Stephen Chambers

[Anglo-Irishman]

My thoughts on this are as follows:

Bandoneons and Anglos are in principle diatonic instruments. They are rarely played far from their home keys, so they don't need the equal temperament that fully chromatic instruments like pianos, English concertinas and Duets need, in order to play in all keys.

It's a vastly complicated subject, and one that's been discussed here numerous times before, but basically yes, except that some temperaments allow both sweeter tuning and chromatic playing.

 

Stephen,

Yes, as an autoharper I know how complicated it is. My question to you, as a free-reed historian, would be:

 

Were any of the many non-equal temperaments actually ever used on diatonic concertinas or accordions?

 

I've read that the early English concertinas got round the problem of the Pythagorean comma by having the enharmonics (e.g. D# and Eb) on different buttons and actually tuned differently. (There was a discussion somewhere on the Net of a Regondi work that has two consecutive notes written as D# and Eb respectively, and whether the difference would have been audible on an early EC.) If you're already doing things like that, it's a small step to tuning the fifths and thirds on an Anglo to perfect or near perfect intervals. This would make the tonic of the G row of a C/G anglo slightly flat, if the tonic of the C row was tuned +- zero.

 

Diatonic autoharpers deliberately tune certain strings a couple of cents "off centre" by the tuner.

They should maybe be adjusting some of them by as much as 20 cents - or more!

 

You are quite correct here - "a couple of cents" was rather vague

 

Cheers,

John

[RatFace]

That tuner is _great_, so thanks for mentioning it!

[Stephen Chambers]

My thoughts on this are as follows:

Bandoneons and Anglos are in principle diatonic instruments. They are rarely played far from their home keys, so they don't need the equal temperament that fully chromatic instruments like pianos, English concertinas and Duets need, in order to play in all keys.

It's a vastly complicated subject, and one that's been discussed here numerous times before, but basically yes, except that some temperaments allow both sweeter tuning and chromatic playing.

Stephen,

Yes, as an autoharper I know how complicated it is. My question to you, as a free-reed historian, would be:

 

Were any of the many non-equal temperaments actually ever used on diatonic concertinas or accordions?

John,

 

Yes, which is why I answered "but basically yes" to your question above - not wanting to start writing a treatise on the subject.

 

In fact Old German concertinas, as well as melodeons and harmonicas, used to be always tuned "just", whilst some Anglos (notably Jeffries ones) were tuned to something kinda' similar, only more complicated...

 

There's some very useful information about just intonation on harmonica tech Pat Missin's website under Tuning and the Harmonica, especially here, here and here.

[hjcjones]

But, I didn't know you could tune concertinas

 

Reeds are tuned by judicious filing to make them sharper or flatter. You'll find plenty of information about it if you search this site and some of the links, or consult Dave Elliott's indispensable "Concertina Maintenance Manual". However, it's definitely a job best left to the experts as you could easily do irreparable damage.

[Patrick King]

But, I didn't know you could tune concertinas

 

Reeds are tuned by judicious filing to make them sharper or flatter. You'll find plenty of information about it if you search this site and some of the links, or consult Dave Elliott's indispensable "Concertina Maintenance Manual". However, it's definitely a job best left to the experts as you could easily do irreparable damage.

 

I wouldn't try it on mine; I'd only let an expert do an expert's job; not a beginner do a piercing, damaging job.

 

I've been thinking of buying the "Concertina Maintenance Manual" for quite some time, as it is also based on maintenance, isn't it? Would anyone know of a place in Australia where I could get it over the net or should I search around at my local book-shops?

 

Cheers,

Patrick

[Pete Dunk]

I've been thinking of buying the "Concertina Maintenance Manual" for quite some time, as it is also based on maintenance, isn't it? Would anyone know of a place in Australia where I could get it over the net or should I search around at my local book-shops?

 

Cheers,

Patrick

 

Hello Patrick,

 

Specialist books like this a have a modest circulation and my copy doesn't have an ISBN number on the back so I think it unlikely that you'll find it in a local bookshop. The book was written by one of the forum members, Dave Elliott. Why not visit his website and buy the book directly from him? He'll only charge you the price of the book and p&p at cost because he's that kind of bloke. Buying the book also entitles you PM Dave for the rest of your life to ask stupid questions which he will answer with infinite (and long suffering) patience because he's that sort of bloke too.

 

Concertina.net is a truly magical place you know. Here you can talk to people with great knowledge and experience who give freely of their time to patiently answer the (sometimes seriously dumb) questions of the likes of you and I.

 

Pete.