how much cents is to much?

Irish Flute
1

After several years of mostly playing the whistle, I’m going back to playing the Flute more and will be doing so at sessions. I thought I was sounding pretty good on the Flute and for S###ts & Giggles I brought out my Kron meter and took some readings… well, some of the notes were off more cents than I would have thought…
but here are my two questions…

  1. what was the least amount of cents off on various notes were you when it became evident to you that you were off at a session?
  2. how many cents off on various notes do you think you would be or have been before it became painfully evident to others that one or several of your notes were off…5,10 20 or more? :confused: :astonished: :boggle:lol:
    Will beer bring your Instrument closer in tune?
    Ben Shaffer
2

I find meters useless. Use your ears. If in doubt, record yourself playing with others. Sometimes you can be more objective listening to yourself when you’re not actually playing. If you’re out of tune so that you can hear it, it’s bad regardless what a meter tells you. It’s all about sound, after all.

3

Yes. And it will also help you pick up nicer looking women to take home with you from the session. Try it sometime.

4

I agree with Cubitt. If you can hear you are off, or if the folks you are playing with can hear you are out of tune, then you are out of tune. Reality is that if you can’t tell you are in tune while you are playing, you can’t do anything about it when it matters.

Meters can tell you the tendencies, and give you the idea if you have to make little changes or big changes, and what that feels like to your embouchure.

Having said that, when I play with classical musicians I’d say I have to keep my overall tuning within a few cents, and the tuning of each and every note within 10 cents. ITM musicians tend to also demand good overall tuning, but are more forgiving about individual notes that are off, especially C# and F#.

Hugh

5

There are exceptions, but in general most tuning meters are set to read in equal temperament, which is great for orchestral applications, and the like. In other words, if playing around the circle of fifths, in all twelve keys, on a fully chromatic instrument is in your plans, then perhaps a typical tuning meter could be a useful reference.

However, an acoustically sweeter tuning is known as “just” intonation, and, for instance, when it comes to ITM, that’s what I tune to. Some tuning meters include a feature, to provide a reference tone, often an A at 440Hz, but I do it the old fashioned way, by striking a tuning fork, then getting that reference tone into my ears, then tuning the same tone on my flute to that tone, and then tuning the other six tones of a diatonic scale, such that they are then acoustically sweet to the original reference tone.

Basically, this is a typical part of “classical” technique, where instead of picking up an instrument and going straight for a tune, one first spends a few moments at getting tuned up, whether equal or just, and then after that, one applies that tuning to their choice of tune, as the acid test, so to speak. At first, spending some warm up time at tuning could be something less than fun, but eventually one’s ears, and corresponding embouchure tuning reflexes, become sharper, faster, and, more importantly, more accurate. The real benefit, here, beyond being in tune, is in gaining an ability to tune to other players, instantly.

Yes, it’s work, but the benefits are quite real.

6

sometimes as little as 2 cents is too much :smiley:


No, I didn’t mean Cork

7

:lol:

Well, there’s tuning by ear, and then there’s tuning by beer.

For instance, a flute player does well to refine their tuning skills, and their ears play a major role in such an ability.

Unfortunately, there could be a downside to such skills, in that the better one gets at it, the more sensitive one becomes to other player’s tuning skills.

Worse, perhaps on occasion another player’s tuning skills could simply be so poor that even a good flute player could resort to tuning by beer.

Maybe you’re familiar with the saying, that by the time a bar/pub closes, the whole world looks good.

:wink: