How do I know if I am in tune or not? Especially now that I have a tunable whistle and it makes al sorts of wonderful noises - how do I know which ones are correct?
Is there something that ‘makes the right noises’ on the net?
Stella
-Try this online guitar pitchpipe. Tune your G note (top three holes covered) to the G on the site and it should work out nicely.
Had a college professor who said that if you know you’re out of tune, then you’re flat. But if you think that you might be out of tune but aren’t sure, then you’re sharp.
JP
On 2002-09-30 19:46, Stella wrote:
How do I know if I am in tune or not? Especially now that I have a tunable whistle and it makes al sorts of wonderful noises - how do I know which ones are correct?
Is there something that ‘makes the right noises’ on the net?Stella
You only can be in tune if you’re playing with more instruments, hard to be in tune with yourself. If you’re playing in an ensemble there’s only one thing you really can do, use your ears.
Oh well THAT makes it just weirder!
So what do people mean when they talk about a whistle being ‘out of tune with itself’?
Thanks,
Stella
Get a tuner at your local music store.
Angie
Hi Stella,
My wife plays an electric piano. Each note is dead accurate. I once used an amazing little machine called a Korg electric tuner to measure each note and each was perfect. Whistles are NEVER that accurrate. They will be off by a couple of “cents” (small measure) on every note, and by as much as 20 cents on some notes. And that’s a reasonably in-tune whistle!! A whistle in D that is in tune with itself plays do, re, me etc. (D, E, F# etc.) with each note on target…more or less. A whistle that is out of tune with itself will have some notes that are so far off (30 cents or more) that you can hear it’s not right. When you play a tune it sounds wrong. A whistle like that is no good for playing with others because they will kick you out. But if it doesn’t bother you, you can play it at home.
OK, so let’s say you have a good tunable whistle that is reasonably in tune with itself. You now need to adjust the slide so that the whistle is at the same pitch as other instruments you might play with, in other words you (and they) need to get tuned. And someone has already given the web address of a tuning note that you can use. Watch yourself go crazy as you try to get it perfect!!
Note: If you are playing by yourself you won’t care about being in tune with others. That’s fine. So you may think you can pull the tuning slide all the way out and get a deeper sounding whistle…just for the fun of it. But if you pull the tuning slide too far off where it should be, it will put the whistle out of tune with itself, and tunes will sound wrong. The adjustment on some slides (Dixons for instance) is way longer than is practical.
Tom M.
(PS: a Korg tuner is $20 in the US. I can buy and ship you one if you are willing to stick a money order in the mail. It will indicate the note being played and how far off it is in cents. )
[ This Message was edited by: Whitmores75087 on 2002-10-01 18:33 ]
When I talk about a whistle being “out of tune with itself,” I mean that not all the notes are what they are supposed to be (presuming I’m playing correctly, and assuming more or less equal wind pressure for notes that are in proximity to one another). For example, I may have a whistle whose low D is accurate, but whose G is noticeably sharp or flat. Sometimes you can adjust by over or under blowing, but sometimes you can’t.
I say “noticeably” because it’s not unusual for instruments to be moderately “out of tune” with themselves…but if you’re playing a tune and that note just doesn’t sound right, no matter what you do (or if you have to jump through all kinds of hoops to MAKE it sound right), the whistle is out of tune with itself.
Of the whistles I own, the only ones on which this is a serious problem is my Walton’s Mellow D and one of my Generation Ds. The rest are almost certainly not “perfect,” but they are close enough to sound fine when played.
Redwolf
Stella-Here is yet another online tuner, if you can get past all the intrusive pop-up ads on this site. This one is oriented
toward fiddle tuning, but you can use it for
G,D, A or E pitch.
http://www.fortunecity.com/greenfield/panda/13/mmst/less1.htm
-Good Luck-
Brian