I am finding it difficult to tune my home-made whistles exactly to the tuner, so I tried my other whistles and found larger discrepancies than I expected.
I am using a Zoom H2 as a tuner, and I do not know what the markings on the tuner actually mean in deviation from the correct pitch. There are nine little circles arranged like markings for a dial, one dead centre and four to each side. If each mark represents the same number of cents, then each must be about 12.5 cents. I have the zoom calibrated to 440Hz.
When I am tuning one of my whistles I like it to be within one of theses marks of the correct pitch (flat in the lower octave, sharp in the upper). My whistles are not hugely stable though - a small variation in breath pressure can vary the pitch a lot.
To get an idea of what I should do, I played some of my bought whistles against the tuner, and was staggered to find that most were further out than one mark. Mostly the whistles were flat especially in the lower octave. I tried blowing them into tune, but they seemed to break to the upper octave before reaching the expected pitch. This is even with the whistles at their shortest. I would have thought that a whistle at its most compact (shortest adjustment) would be sharp…
I could explain these findings several ways. Easiest is that the Zoom is not an accurate tuning device, and I can find no specification of its accuracy. Another explanation is that my reference of 440Hz is incorrect. Yet another is that my blowing technique is to blame. Or maybe I am aiming for too high an accuracy?
Hence my question, what does ‘in tune’ mean? Do people notice 12 cents off? 25 cents?. What is acceptable?
Alternately, does anyone have evidence for the accuracy (or its lack) of the Zoom H2 tuner?
Sorry I don’t have any experience with that tuner.
I’ve used standard Korg tuners for many years and they’ve always been reliable and easy to use and easy to read. I have three or four of them tucked away in various instrument cases.
I recently bought a little clip-on tuner that feels the vibrations of the whistle rather than needing to hear it, very handy for noisy environments. It’s called the Snark. Several firms make similar things and they’re quite inexpensive. What’s cool is that I can just leave the Snark clipped onto my MK Low D as I play and glance down at it whenever I want to check tuning.
When I first got the Snark it was strange-looking to read because it has a different style of gauge. I played my MK while looking at both an old Korg and the new Snark for a bit until I got accustomed to reading the Snark.
But yes some whistles are shockingly out of tune the way they come. I’ve done a lot of carving and chopping and taping on whistles over the years to get them all to play the same way, so I don’t have to blow each one some clever unique way to play them in tune.
Phill, you could try the software shaku tuner from here (scroll down a bit): http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~tuner/tuner_e.html
That should give you some idea about the Zoom tuner scale calibration.
Regards in-tune:
The question is also to what reference a note is regarded as in-tune.
Standard electronic tuners show tuning according to equal temperament.
Many whistles are tuned with just intonation.
So you need to ask yourself what you are after.
The best tuner for tuning notes relative to each other is your ears.
sorry to not answer any of your questions directly, but my vote is for a clip on tuner as well.
these are great for live situations as it doesn’t need to “hear” you, just feel the vibration of the instrument (works for nearly anything!)
i have the Fishman and Tune Tech, and both were around $16-18 US, and the Intellitouch looks a little fancier and runs about $20-30.
On a side note, this is why i stopped playing the pipes! i couldn’t take how out of tune they were, even from good players on good gear (let alone me with entry level gear and very little experience!)
The software is simple to use, isn’t it? It tells a similar story to the Zoom H2, but puts the difference in context -the gradations on the zoom represent less than I thought they did. The whistles that I tested had a maximum deviation of 30 cents, though that still seems large to me.
What I did like was the sound-spectrum graph. I had avoided fingerings like xxooxx, xxooox, xxxoox etc because they seemed ‘different’ (flat) compared to the notes without the lower fingers down. However, the tuner says that the pitch does not change, just the complexity of the notes.
As for trusting my ears - that’s all well and good once my ear is trained. At present I don’t trust my ears, but I am sure they will learn eventually. Of course, if I start to tune non-ET I will need more sophisticated tuners, too,
Slightly off topic but I thought you might find this of interest. I bought a package of silicon pencil grippers at the local staples store for $1. Once I got my tunable whistles in tune where I like them, I attached the silicon pencil gripper to the joint. I can keep my whistles any which way and the pencil gripper will keep the two pieces nice and always in tune. This also seals any air gaps that happen from mishandling in my Clare 2 piece.
There’s always a problem tuning a flute or whistle in an isolated manner. That is, just playing a note into a tuner, because the player is part of the instrument. A player with a good ear is constantly changing pressure, attack, and all that to keep the tuning of the instrument constant. As you’ve discovered, a lot of whistles, and highly respected ones at that, are out of tune if you just play an isolated note, but in the hands of a reasonably good player, will sound great.
You might try flutini to see how a whistle does when playing a tune.
Ah, but there are lots of sorts of crazy… I may not be sane, but maybe I need to do this flutini thing to complete the set.
Seriously, though, this idea that you should tune whilst playing rather than against single notes has me worried - I have been tuning my home-made whistle for single notes. I drill one hole at a time, which approach precludes ‘playing’ in any meaningful sense until I have almost finished.
In order to tune while playing I would need to drill all the holes undersize, and then play to flutini, adjust the hole sizes, and repeat. Is this how real whistle makers do it?
In my experience, a deviation of +/- 10 cents or so is normal, especially in context. Most people will perceive that as in tune, and a well-designed whistle should allow you to play consistently within that 20 cent range centered on the target pitches without a lot of breath gymnastics and without thinking about it too much.
Yep, that can be a problem. You might want to look at my old discussion of whistle breath plateaus (plateaux?) here:
I think each whistle maker has a little different way.
I have tried the hole calculator’s but found I could get closer using the per cent method. Most of the time there will be about two holes that are off. Before I drill the tone holes I cut off the bottom of the tube till I get the bell note I am after. Then I check the second octave of the same note. If the second octave note does not play easy enough then the plug and ramp need some adjustment. Then with my measurements from the per cent method all the tone holes are drilled. I use a MM rule because they are easier to work with than inches and parts of an inch. If a person is only making one whistle then filing the hole to size should be OK. I prefer to plug the off holes and drill again.
When it plays right I put all the measurements on that whistle and it becomes a pattern.
I don’t think it pays to over think this stuff. If it sounds good, and sounds in tune it’s fine.
If you can play with other instruments without creating dissonances, don’t worry about it. You can blow ANY whistle pretty sharp or flat, but that flexibility also means that you can blow most whistles INTO tune with a bit of experience. You can drive yourself crazy chasing a couple of cents sharp or flat.
Thanks MTGuru. The +/- 10 cents figure helps a lot - my ears are not trained yet, so I could not judge tolerance on this. A rough figure like that is what I was hoping for.
That ‘breath plateau’ model makes a lot of sense to me. Though I would clarify one point (from theoretical consideration of your points, not personal experience). A whistle with a shallow sloping breath-plateau must be closer to in-tune than one with a steep sloping breath plateau. This is because, by your definition a shallow sloping plateau covers less of a frequency range than one with a steeply sloping plateau. Obversely, a whistle with a steeply sloping plateau has more opportunity to blow into tune than a shallow one.
[Edit reason=Whoops did not mean to press that button yet"]
Does that make sense? Does it fit with experience?
[/edit]
Have you tried Flutini, which analyses whether a whistle / flute is in tune from a sequence of notes rather than from playing a single note? It’s pretty easy to bring an out of tune whistle into tune by varying pressure and vice versa, so the software takes that out of the equation to some extent (it’s harder to blow a duff note in tune as part of a melody). Hope that makes some sort of sense, but I’m typing after several glasses of wine, so it might not.
Thanks Mike, I have got flutini, and plan to use it.
I have a pretty good approximation of the hole size/placement now - so flutini may well help. I would not like to use it while doing the initial approximations though.
