Pitch Perfect?

[oliver sudden]

Not sure about singers but for orchestral players the difference is enormous. One of my nephews plays professionally in Norway where they play at 443, when he comes back to the UK he says it takes some time to re-adjust to 440.

What instrument? If it’s a wind instrument that change can be very unamusing indeed.

It’s certainly a tiny difference but if, to take a completely random example, one happens to live in Germany where the orchestras play at 443 or so and an orchestra that plays at 440 comes on tour, the first few minutes can cause a decent bit of seasickness for a purely hypothetical listener, well, for me.

I don’t have that problem listening at home for some reason…

[oliver sudden]

I'm surprised that at sixth of a semitone (440 to 430) would make a noticeable difference

That’s very nearly a quartertone though, I think?

I don’t have absolute pitch but I have many of its associated handicaps—I find it quite difficult to sing from sheet music at a different pitch from the one I’m reading, regardless of whether I’m sight-singing or know the piece, which is quite silly really because I play clarinet for a living.

My aural memory of most pieces I know is also quite pitch-specific. If I’m letting a piece play in my head then it’s a much clearer memory if I have the pitch right. I can also generally find a pitch without an audible reference, from a couple of pitches that stick quite well in my memory (in particular tuning A, or high C on a Bb clarinet). Except now that my 50th birthday is receding into the distance my remembered pitches have drifted a semitone or so down…

[mopsus]

The organ at a church where I sang was sent away for repair, and replaced with a temporary digital instrument. I sensed without being told that it was tuned to a slightly higher pitch - our DoM had also noticed this and told me the difference was about a sixth of a semitone. But that difference was too small for me to worry about singing notes differently, given the standard at which I sang.

[oliver sudden]

I quizzed a couple of my (German) colleagues yesterday. Our violinist says that if she’s playing at 440 she does constantly have to remind herself to play lower than she hears the music. Interestingly (at least for me) our percussionist said that it’s perfectly fine having most tuned percussion (vibraphone, xylophone, crotales) a bit higher than the nominal standard of an orchestra/ensemble. Certainly better than lower, which sounds dull. And if we bring our own 443 vibraphone over to the UK but rent a marimba that can get quite nasty.

I just tune to 442 since my clarinets aren’t built for 443 and constantly ‘pinching up’ is bad for both my sound and my embouchure…and no one notices anyway. If need be I’ll pick a higher fingering for individual notes. If I play at 440 I’ll take a longer barrel (that’s the short joint just under the mouthpiece) and maybe have to think a bit lower. Pulling out the joints a bit is something I try to avoid since it throws the instrument out of tune with itself because of the gaps it introduces into the bore. (Some pieces ask for a clarinet to be tuned a quarter tone lower by pulling out at all the joints, which works surprisingly well.)