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From day one in band you learn to "Tune up" by typically playing a concert A or Bb. I started to question this the other day when I was trying to isolate some problem areas on my Alto. I was having issues with the horn playing in tune with itself, so I set out to "map" each note on the horn. Basically I wanted to know how many cents sharp or flat each note was.
When I started the process I had read an article by a Yamaha sponsored clinician, that said you should tune your Alto playing on Low B. The reason he said was because it is a note that is very hard to affect the pitch on by inadvertantly lipping it up or down. So you know you are starting out using an accurate point. I performed my test on each note of the horn after tuning up to fingered low B ( D concert ) The results were pretty interesting, but that is for another post.
Because I was dealing with some Manufacturer issues I sent my results to Yamaha, and was told my results were skewed because I tuned to low B and that you should always tune to fingered G on alto ( Bb concert ) I didn't think to ask if tenor was any different .
When I retuned using the fingered G tuning the results changed, ( though I still had huge intonation issues ) A number of notes that were out of tune were much closer but other notes had moved farther out of tune.
So my question is... What note puts the horn in best tune with itself and others?
When I started the process I had read an article by a Yamaha sponsored clinician, that said you should tune your Alto playing on Low B. The reason he said was because it is a note that is very hard to affect the pitch on by inadvertantly lipping it up or down. So you know you are starting out using an accurate point. I performed my test on each note of the horn after tuning up to fingered low B ( D concert ) The results were pretty interesting, but that is for another post.
Because I was dealing with some Manufacturer issues I sent my results to Yamaha, and was told my results were skewed because I tuned to low B and that you should always tune to fingered G on alto ( Bb concert ) I didn't think to ask if tenor was any different .
When I retuned using the fingered G tuning the results changed, ( though I still had huge intonation issues ) A number of notes that were out of tune were much closer but other notes had moved farther out of tune.
So my question is... What note puts the horn in best tune with itself and others?