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
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