440

[diane-michaels]

A kindred spirit in 440-dom and I were just discussing our preference for tuning to 440, not a new conversation for us. As a bass player, he certainly has options literally at his fingertips to adjust intonation when orchestral pitch rises, but unless an orchestra states that they tune to a pitch other than 440, he refuses to adjust to the ever sharpening orchestra.

I prefer the tone of my harp tuned to 440, and with the tension on modern harps so much higher than old harps, the last thing I want to do is make my harp harder to play. Like him, if I know an A440 is being given to the orchestra and hear musicians start the concert sharp, I’m not the least bit interested in raising my pitch at intermission to support what I hear as irresponsible tuning.

What do you do in this situation?

[kimberly-rowe]

Interesting….. I always tune to 441–I just think the harp is going to sound better slightly higher than lower in an orchestra, and most often the pitch is going to rise not fall. It is annoying though….

[katie-buckley]

I have to tune to 443 over here. If I’m at 442, half way through the concert, I sound flat. I don’t actually notice a difference between the feeling of the instrument at 440 (which I have to switch to for pop recordings) and 443. As for what it sounds like, as long as its in tune with my surroundings I’m happy! To me, being a little flat drives me nuts. 🙂

[diane-michaels]

Being married to a bassist (but not the kindred spirit re: tuning who inspired this topic), I look on in envy at his collection of basses – the orchestral bass, the solo bass, etc… My orchestral harp IS my solo harp, but I’ve reached a point where I don’t want the same things from my harp in both scenarios. Bass dudes even have this whole “solo tuning” thing going on. It really comes down to keeping my harp at what is a stable pitch choice, suits me as a soloist, plays well with others, etc… and 440 wins out in the majority of situations.

My nightmare days are when I play with an organ tuned below 440 early in the day and play with an orchestra that tunes to 441 right after. Yikes! Worse than the concert where I played the Ravel Pavane and the Cav Intermezzo back to back – who can retune a 7th octave C that fast, asks the short harpist?

[sarah-mullen–2]

I’m often so envious of musicians who get to spend a lot of their time performing with others, and then I read posts like this and I remember why I’m so glad to be a soloist. I tune however I want, which is 440, and if I drift a little bit during the day that’s okay, as long as I keep the harp in tune with itself.

I did once have problem on one of my recordings. I always record the harp parts first, and then fill in the other instruments. I had a track I’d arranged for harp, cello and wooden flute. When we finally got to record the flute parts it was over 100 degrees in Houston, and the room was not sufficiently regulated. The flutist recorded the easier accompaniment parts first, but waited too long to record the main part. By the time he got to it the temp and humidity had made his wooden flute so sharp that it couldn’t be forced into 440, so he switched to a tin whistle, which was entirely the wrong tone for the piece of music. The flute was the melody line at this point in my arrangement, so I couldn’t bury it in the mix, and so we had to work with it. We tried adding filters to make the tone of the whistle closer to that of a wooden flute, which did not work at all. What we did succeed in doing was making a tin whistle sound like a calliope, which turned out to be kind of cool, so we used it. If our instruments had been able to agree on a tuning I wouldn’t have a funky sounding electronic calliope on one track.

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