Frequencies and Cents
Hi,
I am obviously missing something. Having gone through your section(s) 3 for tuning I am having some difficulty relating in Frequencies for Octaves and those keys in between.
The tonic frequency as I understand it should be around 440 Hz and in some cases slightly higher or lower. When looking at octaves In Acoustic laws the next octave is twice the base frequency i.e. 880Hz. The next Octave should be 1760Hz. Similarly, the lower octave from 44Hz would be 220 Hz. Is there a chart or book available that helps me with this understanding?
Is this where I am getting confused with cents and are all keys the same frequency and pitches are different to the lengths of the reeds. My confusion may be due to my engineering understanding i.e. If the cantilever beams (reeds) are the same width and thickness but has a different length then one would assume the frequency would be related to the length.
Thanks for your help. any recommended references that I can view would be helpful. again I am missing some very basics. ????
As you may have discovered, there is not a 1 to 1 match between cents and Hertz; the relationship is logarithmic.
Yes, tuners have octaves and cents built in; you don't have to build a table of square-root calculations.
When tuning a harmonica, take the key note of the harmonica, such as Eb for an Eb harmonica, C for a C harmonica, and so on and use that for the basis of the rest of what you do.
Now, A440 is NOT the standard to use, even though it's the worldwide standard.
WHY?
Player's breath tends to depress pitch. Consequently harmonicas are tuned to an elevated reference pitch that can be anywhere from A441 to A448. A player like Stevie Wonder, whose sound depends on fairly heavy pitch depression, may have his harps tuned to A446, for instance. Most players I know tune somewhere in the A441-442 range.
So, first set your tuner to your choice of pitch reference - A442, or whatever (personally, I use A442). Then tune Blow 4 to that. Get your lower and higher octaves in tune with that note - BY EAR. No matter what the tuner says, if it sounds off, it *is* off.
If you're tuning to equal temperament, you'll then tune all your notes that way. But if you want sweeter dounding harmony intervals and chords, you're going to follow one of the various temperament schemes that pushes the pitch of this note some number of cents up or down from that standard.
Great explanation of pitch theory and harmonica tuning. Inky: If you want to get deeper into the weeds on this, take a gander on why pianos are tuned by human beings, and not by simply plopping a stroboscope on the top of the piano and going at it with a wrench. Much like a harmonica, were a piano to be tuned simply by adjusting string pitch to a strict mathmatical standard, a lot of stuff actually played on the piano would sound awful. Thus the subjective complexity of tuning harmonica reeds so that they interact with each other in a way so that chords sound good. And then imagine that the poor piano tuner has to deal with 264 reeds, i.e. 88 triple sets of wires. Even if you're working on a 16-hole chromatic, that's still only 64 reeds!
Thanks as always both of you. This really helps.
Hey,
My apologies. I was obviously impatient with myself. After watching episode 4C, the iStrobaSoft demonstrates that The Octave frequencies are built into the software and the knowledge of Octaves is not required for the tuning process. The octaves show up as C4, C5 etc.
I am assuming that Intonation is still required for Position 1 etc. for Pop
Thanks
Inky