Re: Music Glossary - 1.64 Concert Pitch (2.12.2)

[Paul Scott]

Anthony W. Youngman wrote:
> Ow!
>
> Sorry, reading this was painful (I play the trombone, as many of you 
> know :-)
>
> 1.64 concert pitch
>
> The pitch at which the piano and other non-transposing instruments 
> play, such music is said to be 'in C'. Officially, it is defined as "A 
> = 440", meaning that the note A in the treble clef indicates a sound 
> that has a frequency of 440Hz. There are other standard frequencies, 
> but they have mostly fallen into disuse.
>
> This convention is used for (almost?) all instruments with multiple 
> sounding parts, eg tuned percussion and strings.
>
> Instruments with a single sounding part (woodwind, brass) follow a 
> different convention and are generally known as transposing 
> instruments, although for some instruments (eg flute, oboe), the two 
> conventions lead to the same result. The trombone is unusual in that 
> music for it can be written using either or both conventions.
>
> 1.311 transposing instrument
>
> Instruments whose notated pitch is different from concert pitch. Most 
> of these instruments are identified in their name by their fundamental 
> pitch - this being the note whose wavelength is equal to length of the 
> instrument. For example Concert A is 440Hz, the speed of sound in air 
> is 343m/s, therefore an A clarinet (or any other A wind instrument) 
> will have a length of 343/440 = 78cm. (Or be a power of 2 longer or 
> shorter.)

We could probably get to the truth from here but this is not correct as 
stated.  My A clarinet is not 78cm long.  It is significantly shorter.  
I don't know if this is more accurate for a brass instrument.  It could 
be.  I guess you would be talking about a trombone in 1st position or a 
valved instrument with the valves not depressed.  For an A clarinet a 
low C (sounding concert A 220Hz) you would be fingering a note which 
only used about 1/2 the length of the instrument.  For a C above that 
(sounding A 440Hz.) you would be using most of the length of the 
instrument but this is the 2nd harmonic of a cylindrical bore which is 
probably not a reasonable place to apply your description.
> This note is always written as middle C in the treble clef, and is 
> usually referred to as "being in 'X'" where X is the fundamental of 
> the instrument it's written for. 

As mentioned above this not the fundamental for a woodwind even if it is 
for a brass instrument.  The most common fingering for a woodwind is the 
six finger note which is D (in the upper register for clarinets or G for 
a bassoon).  From there we get to a C by either adding one finger or by 
removing most of the fingers.  Neither using either the tube with no 
fingers down or all fingers down is really equivalent to a brass 
instrument for the purposes of this discussion.  From one point of view 
you would call a bassoon an F instrument, a normal clarinet (Bf) an Eb 
instrument (equivalent to an F recorder).

Paul Scott