MTGuru wrote:I hate to tell you this, Cathy, but that probably has nothing to do with your tuning.Cathy Wilde wrote:wondering if I've been driving people crazy all these years!
Hahahahahahaha. You're in for it now, buddy.
MTGuru wrote:I hate to tell you this, Cathy, but that probably has nothing to do with your tuning.Cathy Wilde wrote:wondering if I've been driving people crazy all these years!
Tom_S wrote:Apologies for ressurecting an old thread.
I'm trying to find a table of values for how many cents out each note on the scale should be for each note on the chanter.
I've got a Korg LC-120 tuner which you can program for different intonations. You enter in in +/- # cents for each note.
Most "Just Intonation" charts showing +/- cents for each note given that the tonic note is +0 cents of equal temperament. However, given that our tonic is D and we're tuning for A=440, it's the perfect 5th that is +0 cents, and the tonic would therefore be very slightly flat of equal temperament.
Maybe I'm being too pedantic...
Ted wrote:I use a tuner to set my low D on the chanter and use my ear for the rest. These days even fiddle players are tuning all their stings with the tuner. It is too easy to "play to the tuner", meaning you adjust pressure or tension to influence the tuner and can end up not so perfectly in tune. Better to train your ear than rely solely on tuners IMHO.
pancelticpiper wrote:I just use a regular tuner, and have everything in tune to that.
Most of the time I'm playing "legit" gigs, where I'm playing with orchestral instruments, and I have to have every note exactly in tune to Equal Temperament.
Somebody happened to record my playing along with pipe organ, and you can hear that the chanter is in strict ET and is in tune with the accompaniment. Maybe it's just me, but in my opinion a chanter tuned like this sounds fine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onGGxt19ksg
Oddly, I can switch on the drones and every note blends... I think it's just a matter of blowing the notes into tune, which is pretty much automatic. The exception perhaps is B, where I definitely like the note to be at ET pitch even when playing solo with the drones (instead of -16 cents where it should be in JI).
I'm far more aware of the Equal Temperament/ Just Intonation dichotomy when playing Highland pipes in an orchestral setting. That flat 7th at -31 cents (the Harmonic Minor 7th position) just doesn't work with the orchestra/pipe organ/brass and I have to bring that note up. Also the JI Major 6th at -16 cents needs to be brought up a tad. Thing is, to the drones the note is the Major 6th but the accompaniment might be playing a chord where that note is the root (in which case it should be at +/-0 cents) or, even, a chord where that note is the 5th (in which case it ought to be at +2 cents!).
Stuff like that is the very reason for ET.
Ah Ted when you tune up an entire Highland pipe band... then your ears REALLY need a rest!
What many pipe bands do is use an electronic tuner to establish the baseline pitch, the drone pitch. Then one-by-one each piper's drones are tuned with the tuner to the baseline pitch, and each note of his chanter is tuned by ear to blend with the drones (to strict JI). Pipe bands have found that tuning each note of the scale to the drones by ear is far faster and easier than trying to tune each note of the scale to a bagpipe-specific tuner which has the JI scale built into it. If you don't have a good enough ear to tune each note of the chanter to the drones, you shouldn't have the job of tuning the band!
Thanks, Mark, well put. Tuning up pipes for me is a feeling you get as much as anything; when you add in the regulators it's very much an overall sensation you strive for, difficult to put into words. Kirk Lynch once wrote a piece about pipemaking and the "rolling" sound of the F# against the D, that was an excellent word to describe the feeling you get when things are well in alignment.uillmann wrote:Sometimes, I wonder why there is a preponderance of queries regarding just intonation, electronic tuners, tempered tuning, specific Hertz for certain notes, etc. I have usually tuned my chanter's G, B, and d, (along with the drones and regulators,) to a Marine Band or Special 20 G harmonica, and I occasionally check the accuracy of the A with a 440 fork. Works great. You can feel it. You can hear it. If your local box player has good reeds, tune to him. What do you want to do? Watch blinking lights? Close your eyes and become transported. It's not a particle accelerator. It's about music, not engineering.