What pitch do you use?

[Wade Hampton]

Actually, Bill, that doesn’t sound like any fun at ALL....


Wade Hampton “Wet Blanket” Miller

[Parlorman]

Originally Posted by Wade Hampton

Actually, Bill, that doesn’t sound like any fun at ALL....


Wade Hampton “Wet Blanket” Miller

I should have included a sarcasm alert.

[reeve21]

Originally Posted by Glennwillow

What pitch do you use?

I usually say, "You won't be disappointed."

Regarding guitar tuning, I use A = 440 Hz,

- Glenn

I saw what you did there, Glenn, very clever.

Thanks for the levity, this topic needs it

[gfspencer]

I tune my guitars to 440. I tune my bagpipes to 475.

[Earl49]

I use A=440 which is the conventional standard in the US. I also calibrate my sound meters with 94 dB at 1000 Hz - another standard point of reference.

Originally Posted by gfspencer

I tune my guitars to 440. I tune my bagpipes to 475.

You can tune a bagpipe????!!! Who knew?

[rllink]

I just tune it to whatever my tuner says and play it safe. I have enough trouble without doing weird stuff. If I show up to play with people and they start talking about something else I have to leave. They are taking me off on a side road I don't need to go down.

[Bob Womack]

Och! Show up to an audition tuned up to 432 and you might as well show up with a banjo or accordion.

Bob

[Wade Hampton]

For me the whole thing is about being flexible when playing with other musicians who have their own approach to things.

If some of them have quirks, like wanting to play to a nonstandard concert pitch, ask yourself whether you’ll enjoy and perhaps gain from playing music with them. If they harangue newbies and neophytes with their gnostic beliefs every time these new players show up, and subject them to the same diatribes on every occasion, then maybe it’s not worth the trouble. But if they explain it once and are cool about it after that, it might be worth it.

Just a thought...


whm

[ssynhorst]

For most guitarists it doesn't matter, tune to A-440. But if you are really interested in pitch, tone, ancient music, it matters a lot.

It matters more in stringed and fretted instruments like guitar. If you tune in standard with open strings, then the first time you fret a string you increase the tension and the string goes a bit sharp, oops. You are a trifle out of tune with the piano, the reeds and the brass. If you are playing with a old organ or a cajun accordian you are probably way out of tune. If you are playing with an old fiddler you may be out of tune with his ancient ears.

If you put on a capo all your strings will go sharp, some more than others. If you play down the neck your guitar it may go out of tune with itself unless you have it rectified by a really good guitar tech.

Maybe you don't care, but then your are not the smartest donkey in the herd. - Stevo

[Wade Hampton]

Points well taken, Stevo - I appreciate your sensible, thoughtful approach. My only objection to folks insisting on using lower pitches for A is when they try to wrap this practice in dubious theories that actually have nothing to do with the music at all, but are born of flights of fancy and circular reasoning.

Rather than any easily tested and proven points like the ones you provided.

Perhaps it’s at least partially because both my wife and daughter are working biologists, professionals in the field, I’m an evidence-based kind of guy. Assertions that can’t be proven in scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles are not something that I can be easily persuaded to believe.

But I try to be easygoing about it and am perfectly willing to play tuned to other pitches, so long as the other players are worth playing music with and don’t expect me to parrot all these outlandish theories, too.

As for me not being the smartest donkey in the herd, since I was born in Missouri I would rather be a Missouri mule, instead of a donkey or some other beast of burden. Mules are smarter than most Yankees expect.


Wade Hampton Miller

[1neeto]

Can we go back to teasing banjo players? [emoji13]

[davidbeinct]

Well that was a rabbit hole. It did get me interested in going back and finishing This is Your Brain on Music, which got a bit dry so I paused in my reading.

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by 1neeto

Can we go back to teasing banjo players? [emoji13]

I'm all for it!


whm

[musicman1951]

I spent most of my adult life playing and conducting ensembles with fixed pitch keyboard percussion instruments, so anything that strayed much from 440 got pretty irritating pretty quickly. As Wade already said, you've got to tune to these instruments.

I'll often go a week or two without consulting a tuner. My guitar can drift a few cents (usually down) and it doesn't bother my ear at all (read: I can't tell the difference). But I remember a Youtube video comparing the same guitar with "normal" and lower tuning, and I definitely preferred the 440 tuning. I don't know if that's because I hear 440 daily or I prefer the tone of the guitar there.

I tried tuning down a half step for a few days when I had a dread. That was around A=415 and my head didn't explode.

[Dru Edwards]

Like most others, 440.