Using a Tuner

Uilleann Pipes
1

Here is an article that I wrote a few years back for the Pipers Review. Some of you might be interested.

Sll the best,
Pat Sky

TUNING IN
Or using the electronic tuner to tune the pipes.


There is not a musician alive that does not have trouble tuning the pipes at one time or another. The problem lies with the amount of time spent in tuning; the longer one tunes the worse it gets. There is a scientific reason for this. The human ear has a built in mechanism that turns off after prolonged exposure to a single frequency or note. The result of this is that after a while even the best musician begins to loose the ability to distinguish sharp from flat. This is the main reason why so many sets of pipes are out of tune. Some pipers take the easy way and simply ignore it. But if you are like me an out of tune set of pipes is fit only for the fire.

There is a simple solution to the problem and that is the Electronic Automatic Tuner. At one time tuners were big and bulky and only professional piano tuners had them. However, thanks to the demands of the electric guitar, the industry addressed the problem and came up with the small portable and highly accurate turners that are now on the market.

The tuner has two major advantages: its ability to overcome the ear fatigue problem, and if you are one of those people who have problems with pitch, the tuner is an excellent way to train your ear to hear correctly. So called tone deafness is merely the result of an untrained ear. Once the correct intervals of notes is learned, anyone can have good pitch.

Make sure that you have a tuner that (1) automatically finds the note that you are playing (2) has a light display and (3) has a meter display to tell you if you are sharp or flat. DO NOT buy one of the tuners that just has a light display Only the meter type works well with the pipes.

To use the tuner first play your chanter and find out if it is generally sharp or flat over all. If the chanter is, for example, sharp (most chanters are) then you must decided whether or not you want to bring it to concert pitch . Unfortunately this type of problem is usually only cured by a new reed. If the problem can be cured by seating the reed either further in or out of the chanter, then you are in luck.

There is nothing wrong with having a set of pipes that are not in concert pitch as long as they are in tune with themselves; this is a matter of taste; some people like sharp pipes. The point is that you must tune your drones to the pitch of the chanter. For example if your chanter registers 10 cents sharp (100 cents equals a half tone) then when you tune your drones tune them 10 cents sharp—its that simple.

To tune the drone do as follows: Turn on your tuner. Play an A on the chanter and observe where the meter settles ( sharp or flat). Turn on your drones and stop all but one drone. Slowly adjust the drone until the meter reads the desired setting—the same setting in cents as the chanter. Now tune the rest of the drones to the drone that is in tune. Finally turn on all of the drones and look at the meter. It should register the correct setting that matches that of the chanter. If it doesn’t, start over. Also, when playing with other musicians it is very easy for them to tune to the pipes. Simply have them adjust their instruments to the meter settings that match the pipes—fast and accurate.

2

I just thought I’d add a little bit of info on tuning temperament…

The method Pat describes is of course perfectly accurate – we’d expect nothing less from him!

For those unfamiliar with tuning and temperment, let me add something.

Pat suggests tuning your A (either to A440, which is what the tuner says is in tune), or just noting by how many cents (cents in a unit of pitch) sharp or flat you are and tuning your drones to the same relative pitch.

There’s just one kicker here:
Almost all tuners recognize and tune to something called “equal temperment”, while pipes are tuned to “just intonation”.

The reason for different tunings boils down to acoustics/physics and math, and if anyone wants an explanation, I’ll be happy to post it. The short explanation is – equal temperment makes things sound pretty nice no matter what key you play in and useful for instruments like piano that play in many different keys. Just temperment makes things sound nice against our drones, which is why it is used for bagpipes, including uilleann pipes.

Essentially what this means is that even if your A is in tune with the tuner, the other notes on your chanter should NOT be in tune with it. You can find charts on describing how many “cents” off your chanter should be from the tuner – one of these is in Dave Hegarty’s reedmaking manual (available online for free at the NPU website if you’re a member of NPU)


So, in short – use Pat’s method to tune your “A” and then tune your drones accordingly, but don’t expect your whole chanter to be spot on to most electronic tuners because of the different in temperaments that the pipes and the tuners use.

Cheers,

Pelham

3

Hi

I thought this would be a good place to ask this question, since where talking about tunning :wink:. How (in laymans terms) do you tune the darn things, without an electronic tutor. Such as what note’s you tune the drones and regulators to etc.

I’m just getting to grips with the GHB’s, tuning is not something I’m looking forward to on the Uilleann pipes. I’ve tryed looking everywhere on the net but found very little info. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place :smiley:.

L42B :slight_smile:

4

L42B…tune your A note on the chanter as close as ye can to A440Htz if ye don’t have an electronic tuner use a tuning fork or ye can sound the A note on a penny whistle either will do..if the note sounds sharp adust the reed out(up)in its seating in the chanter if its flat push the reed down in its seating…hopefully that will see ye through.
Next tune the small drone to the A note ye have now got on the chanter,then the middle drone to the small and finally the big drone to the other two…The regulators are a wee bit more difficult and as ye havenae got there yet ye can tackle that one later…
Electronic tuners :boggle: I really wish that the guitar fraternity would learn to tune to the pipes :roll:
Slan Go Foill
Uilliam

5

Uilliam wrote:"I really wish that the guitar fraternity would learn to tune to the pipes "

It would be a nice thing. Unfortunately, a lot of guitar players today seem almost lost without their electronic devices. I am happy (to some degree) that these compact tuners weren’t around when I was learning guitar as a kid, instead, the instructor had one of those old strobe tuners and I got my guitar tuned once every two weeks…until we got an old piano.

6

The Korg tuner MT-1200 (discontinued) is a great tuner that offers both just intonation and equal temperaments. They do appear on eBAY.

7

[quote=“Uilliam”]I really wish that the guitar fraternity would learn to tune to the pipes

what i have been doing for those of us who play guitar (and i think its alot of us) is offer to tune the guitar for them. that simple appeal to their pride will get them to learn real fast.

meir

8

Pelham,
Hmmmmmm! If you are playing only one note, in this case A,
how do you know which intonation you are using? I thought that the equil intonation rule would only apply when you went to the 2nd octave A, which on the meter should be sharp.

Perhaps the best thing to do would be to play the A and tune the drones, then play the G and re adjust the drones a bit to get an average.

All the best,
Pat

9

Pelham,
Hmmmmmm! If you are playing only one note, in this case A,
how do you know which intonation you are using? I thought that the equil intonation rule would only apply when you went to the 2nd octave A, which on the meter should be sharp.

Perhaps the best thing to do would be to play the A and tune the drones, then play the G and re adjust the drones a bit to get an average.

All the best,
Pat

10

If you are tuning to A=440Hz, and you know that the rest of the tuning on your guitar meter will not suit just intonation, then using the tuner only for A is about all you can count on from the meter.

And what do you do if you have a flat set? :wink:

I don’t know the math, but it would be nice to see someone post a chart of the Hz values for all notes in just intonation versus equal intonation, and then show how this difference would appear on a guitar tuner, or in other words, how to interpret the guitar tuner’s readings to get the equivalent of just intonation, ensuring that this chart would cover all possible note values from a Bb set’s lowest drone up to the 3rd 8ve on an Eb set. I would post it if I knew how to calculate the values.

djm

11

I don’t have all the values right here in front of me but I’ve asked (and received) this exact information before. Pat Sjy’s atricle is very good for the beginning piper though to help them build their ear and the feel of what ‘in tune’ really sounds like.

The only two notes that I remember that should match an equall temperment scale when coming from a just intoned chanter are the D’s. That’s it. EVERYthing else will be just a bit off. Now when I say a bit…that’s exactly how much. and usually it’s a very small bit. If you’ve got intonation differences of more than 30-40 cents, something is wrong that simply tuning to your A note isn’t going to fix.

Most of the time, the difference between the two scales is less than 10 cents or so if my memory serves correctly. 10 cents is something you can adjust with simple bag pressure. So it is important to note that while it is perfectly true to point out that equal temperment and just intonation are in fact completely different tuning systems, they are close enough that you probably won’t hear the difference much if playing in a session.

Bri~

12

Click on “search” at the top of this page. Then enter “intonation” under keywords, and leave the author section blank. Select the whistle, flute, or uilleann pipe forum (or all), then select the post (rather than topic) and finally click on “search.” Read away till your hearts content.

This thread was the last one on the subject:
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?p=240717&highlight=intonation#240717

In a nutshell, Equal was invented because it’s impossible to tune fixed instruments to just–esp the piano. An instrument like the uilleann pipe chanter normally isn’t chromatic (but can be made so) so the keys it plays in all sound pretty good in Just. There are so many variables though. Bag pressure, for instance, can bend some note further out of tune than the difference between Just and Equal.

13

So here’ s my take on it:

From Dave Hegarty’s chart (I have done the math before myself, but don’t have it around to double check him) a “just G” is 1.96 cents flat and “just A” is 1.96 cents sharp of the tuner. The best thing to do would probably be to tune your "A’ to 1.96 cents sharp of A440 or your ‘G’ to 1.96 cents flat, and then tune your drones to ‘D’ on the meter @0cents deviation. Of course, as all of us know who’ve messed with a tuner, the 2 cent variation is practically imperceptible on that needle, and as Brian posted, is really within the variance of bag pressure, temperature fluxuations, etc and not to be worried about.

The other method is just to use the tuner to get the pipes (which we are assuming are in tune with themselves) near A440. Once that is done, you can use whichever note you want on the chanter to tune the drones. If the pipemaker made the pipes correctly, the chanter will be tuned with a just-intonation, which means, if you hear a “just 4th” better than a “just 5th”, then use the G instead of the A to tune the drones. For a perfect 5th, there will be no “beats” when the drone D and the chanter A are in tune, so that’s what I use. Since the chanter is in tune with itself, tuning drones to the chanter and tuning the chanter to A440 are to entirely separable tasks – but I know you know, because you already said that in your first post! :slight_smile:

As far as the intonation rule only applying in the second octave, maybe it is physiologically easier for us to hear the difference at the higher frequencies, but from a physics standpoint it still applies in the first octave as well.

Cheers,
Pelham

14

Just 4ths and 5ths are so close to Equal 4ths and 5ths that you wouldn’t really hear the difference. You have to carefully listen to the beats or watch the rotations on your very expensive tuning machine. I’ve been tuning pianos all my life, and so did my uncle and grandfather, and I have 4 cousins in the business as well. 3rds are off noticably in Equal and are used for the test. In Just, as in a diatonic accordian, every note is pure against another, even the 3rds. Pure is best. But when you have a chromatic scale–12 semitones–pure is impossible between all the notes. Pure would be possible between the first 11, but the 12th would be way way off, like 42 cents. That’s why the compromise (equal-equally off, ie) was invented for fixed instruments. Sliding instruments, like the human voice, trombone, violin (no open strings played), can adjust to pure as they go (on slow tunes).

The octaves should always be pure, Just or Equal, on any instrument.

15

Lorenzo, sorry to seem stupid, but if we are tuning to A=440Hz, but we want to play with others, then would we tune a B set to equal B or just B?

Also, even though people are saying “just intonation”, the UPs are always tuned to the drones, so can we really say that all notes on UPs are truly justly tuned?

Thx,

djm

16

Here’s what I use, supports just intonation and setting the scale root:

http://www.petersontuners.com/products/modelvsam/index.cfm

Its the perfect, abeit a bit pricey, solution to all your tuning troubles…

17

So here’ s my take on it:

From Dave Hegarty’s chart (I have done the math before myself, but don’t have it around to double check him) a “just G” is 1.96 cents flat and “just A” is 1.96 cents sharp of the tuner. The best thing to do would probably be to tune your "A’ to 1.96 cents sharp of A440 or your ‘G’ to 1.96 cents flat, and then tune your drones to ‘D’ on the meter @0cents deviation. Of course, as all of us know who’ve messed with a tuner, the 2 cent variation is practically imperceptible on that needle, and as Brian posted, is really within the variance of bag pressure, temperature fluxuations, etc and not to be worried about.

The other method is just to use the tuner to get the pipes (which we are assuming are in tune with themselves) near A440. Once that is done, you can use whichever note you want on the chanter to tune the drones. If the pipemaker made the pipes correctly, the chanter will be tuned with a just-intonation, which means, if you hear a “just 4th” better than a “just 5th”, then use the G instead of the A to tune the drones. For a perfect 5th, there will be no “beats” when the drone D and the chanter A are in tune, so that’s what I use. Since the chanter is in tune with itself, tuning drones to the chanter and tuning the chanter to A440 are to entirely separable tasks – but I know you know, because you already said that in your first post! :slight_smile:

As far as the intonation rule only applying in the second octave, maybe it is physiologically easier for us to hear the difference at the higher frequencies, but from a physics standpoint it still applies in the first octave as well.

Cheers,
Pelham

18

Ok, here it is laid out for anyone who’s interested – the difference in Just vs. Equal temperament. You’ll probably wished you hadn’t asked! :slight_smile:

A scale is made up of 12 semitones (12 half-steps). To make a major scale, the intervals between notes are: whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half. Where “whole” = 2 half steps.

Try it for any starting note – you’ll see it works.

Definition of an Octave: An octave is a doubling in frequency. So for A=440 Hz, the A an octave above it is A’=880Hz.

So, that seems to mean if we have 12 “half steps” in an octave, we should divide them equally right? Well, not exactly. As you see, frequency DOUBLES every octave, which means we need something closer to a lograhythmic breakdown, not an equal one.

Complicating the issue further is the fact that our ear doesn’t like these equal steps – what sounds pleasing, (and there are some physical reasons for this having to do with wavelength ratios, etc.) are whole number ratios. So that is how Just intonation breaks down the scale.

So, one asks, if our ear likes the way just intonation sounds, why not use these whole number ratios? The problem is, as Lorenzo noted, that if you want a “D” scale, and use these ratios, then the notes will be way off of what you want for a “C” scale. So for instruments like piano, this would make everything seem out of tune except for one particular key that was tuned with these ratios. The answer is “equal temperment” which sets all these divisions equally. So no key is perfectly in tune, but none of them are too far off. Here’s the chart that someone asked for earlier:

Scale StepJust Intonation (ratio) [cents]Equal Temperment: ratio [cents]
1 (1) [0] 2^(0/2) [0]
2***** (9/8=1.125) [204]***** 2^(2/12) [200]
3***** (5/4 = 1.25) [386]***** 2^(4/12) [400]
4***** (4/3 = 1.333) [498]***** 2^(5/12) [500]
5***** (3/2 = 1.5) [610]***** 2^(7/12) [700]
6***** (5/3 = 1.6667 [884]***** 2^(9/12) [900]
7***** (15/8 = 1.875) [1088]***** 2^(11/12) [1100]
8***** (2) [1200]***** 2^(12/12) [1200]

Sorry for the alignment issues but the C&F website doesn’t like my tab delimited list. You can see that the Just and Equal are separated by the *****'s

Take a look at it, and see what happens when you start on “C” and write out the frequencies for a C scale in just intonation, then start on a “D” from that same scale and make a “D” scale in just intonation. Now compare the notes and their assigned frequencies and you’ll see that they do not match.

19

So in simpleton laymans terms,

  1. I tune my chanter’s A to A440 and tune my tenor drone to a pitch with no beats against the chanter (drone shows D on tuner).
  2. I shut off chanter, and tune baritone drone to a pitch with no beats against the tenor drone.
  3. I shut off tenor drone and tune bass drone to a pitch with no beats against the baritone drone.
  4. I shut off baritone drone and check tenor against base for beats.
  5. I check all three drones together. If there is a beat, it is usually removed with a small adjustment of the baritone drone.
  6. I check drones against all the notes on the chanter (always seems to be good at this point, don’t know what I would do if it wasn’t).
  7. Ask my 17 year old, who has an extraordinary sense of pitch, how it sounds. :slight_smile:
    Is this a reasonable procedure or should I be doing something different?

On the tuner topic, I have found that my ear is starting to learn the notes after much use of the tuner. I can now tell if the note is sharp or flat when it is close. Live and learn.


John :slight_smile:

20

Pelham, I would like to employ your chart. What are the calculations (basic arithmetic) to do this?

Let’s say I have a C# chanter practise set (no drones). I think my Bnat is a bit off. Maybe its that the chanter was designed so that the Bnat will blend better with drones. Maybe its that my reed is off - something I could fix. Maybe its that my ear is wrong. So here I am with my just intonation guitar tuner, and the only fixed value I know is A=440Hz. How do I take your chart and apply it to the above hypothetical situation?

Thx,

djm