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[OldHoltonPlayer]

I played the Trombone from grade school through my 1st year of college in the football band.  That was forty years ago.  When I bought my house, I found an old trombone in the attic but left it there.  That was thirty years ago.  I recently retired so I pulled down the old Trombone.  It is a 1912 Frank Holton Special made in Chicage.  I had Rob Stewart repair it and I am taking lessons.

My questions are about “high pitch” and “low pitch”.  I only have the “high pitch” tuning slide.  It is just long enough to correctly tune the horn.   With the tuning slide all the way in, the horn is about 10hz high around middle C.

I read earlier posts that concert A used to be 465 Hz. and later 415Hz.  Also, Rob said it was common for bands to tune high when my horn was made.

What is the history of high and low pitch tuning slides?

As far as I know there are no "high" and "low" pitch tuning slides because, well, there just isn't.  I'm sure there are people who have tried stuff like that but to my knowledge I don't think that is something people use in these times, but I could always be wrong.

[ghellquist]

Hi OldHoltonPlayer,
     just my two cents on this.

According to the history as I´ve been able to patch it together the concept of standard pitch has varied quite a lot over time. As far as I can fathom, the current standard 440Hertz came about on some kind of world congress in the 1920-s. So an instrument built around 1912 would not follow the, at that time non-existant, standard.

In my town, Stockholm Sweden Europe, we see that church organs built before this time are tuned to different pitches. Some day, I think I would like to do a research on this by going around and measure the pitch.

It is a very interesting topic as such.

Gunnar Hellquist
owns a bass trombone

[BGuttman]

I have a pair of H.N. White "The King" trombones, one in high pitch and one in low pitch.  Neither one plays in "modern" tune; the high pitch horn is too high with the tuning slide all the way out and the low pitch horn is too low with the tuning slide all the way in.  I know that many horns were sold with two tuning slides; one for high pitch and one for low pitch.  Basically you would build a High Pitch horn and add a tuning slide to put it in Low Pitch.

OTOH, my King High Pitch handslide is actually shorter than my King Low Pitch handslide.

As to history, I found that the choice of A=440 was actually chosen at a congress of music in 1830, but I know for a fact that mid-19th century American bands were tuned to A=465.

Hope this helps.

[David Gross]

In high school my band director had an old tuba that he had to have cut down to bring it up to modern pitch. He thought that over the decades orchestras have tended to tune up to ever higher pitches because that sounds brighter.

Maybe he was wrong. Did he happen to find a low-pitch tuba?

Dave

[svenlarsson]

Quote: As to history, I found that the choice of A=440 was actually chosen at a congress of music in 1830.

It was proposed at a conference in Stuttgart 1838, but was not established before 1938, and not everywhere even then. I did own a beautiful York tuba with high pitch witch I had made lower to 440. I guess you can make a low pitch tuba shorter to match modern pitch.

[ghellquist]

Hi Sven,
     I´m getting more and more intrigued about this pitch thing. If you have any references I´d be willing to spend some time compiling info and come back here and report. Somehow it sounds so wonderfully that all musicians in the world would decide on a common pitch just out of sudden. The suggestion in 1838 and long time for acceptance suddenly seems like a better explanation to me.

Or even better, perhaps somewhere on the net there is a good history text already. I guess I´ll start by searching (good old google).

Gunnar Hellquist
owns a bass trombone

[svenlarsson]

Gunnar, here is a good one! (if you didn’t find it already)
http://www.dolmetsch.com/musictheory27.htm

[stephenkerry]

I think military bands used high pitch at that time (which also influenced brass bands).

[LowNote]

From what I have heard, pitch is going up from the 440 standard.  Some orchestras are tuning up to 442 because of temperature changes.  But that makes me wonder why they were turning at 462 at one point.  That sounds extremely high.

doug

[Edward_Solomon]

quote:Originally posted by bone_idle:
I think military bands used high pitch at that time (which also influenced brass bands).

Actually that's only partly true. In the UK at least, the military bands all changed to low pitch in 1928. The brass band movement didn't embrace low pitch until 1966, which explains why you can still find quite a few high pitch instruments around (that have even been converted to low pitch) in reasonable playing condition.

So, back to the main point, which is that I don't think the military bands have ever had much influence over the brass bands, except perhaps in the very early days during the 19th century. The two have never really engaged with one another in any formal manner, which is evinced by the brass band movement's stubborn insistence on maintaining their own high pitch long after both military bands and orchestras had changed to low pitch in Britain.

[svenlarsson]

There is a trend in Europe of getting higher in tuning, 442 is common, some orchestras are higher like 444 – 445.
I don´t understand what good thats supposed to do though.

"Some orchestras are tuning up to 442 because of temperature changes. "

The temperature problem is of course still there with the 442 tuning.

[ghellquist]

Ooh my,
did I open a box of worms.  As the old saying goes, still confused -- but on a higher level.

I´ve spent a bit of time looking around different sources. I will come back with some more links and ideas, here are some.

Do look at Sven Larssons link in a previous mail, it does give a good helicopter view on the topic.
http://www.dolmetsch.com/musictheory27.htm
Another view might be the following
http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/eng_pitch.html

But before anything else -- it seems like the historians cannot quite agree on things. It does differ a bit in dates and descriptions and so on. So quite a bit of sceptic thinking is adviced.

First question -- is there an international standard? The answer, seems to be yes. The International Organization for Standardization has a standard called ISO16:1975
"Specifies the frequency for the note A in the treble stave and shall be 440 Hz. Tuning and retuning shall be effected by instruments producing it within an accuracy of 0,5 Hz."
I have no access to the actual text (it costs money) but I guess the date 1975 is of the latest revision of the standard.
http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER=3601&ICS1=17&ICS2=140&ICS3=1

This is an interesting article for a starter. It comes out as first choice when opening google.com with the search text "standard pitch". According to the article the "The United States officially adopted A-440 as standard pitch in 1920". Not all of the other references on the net agree.
http://mmd.foxtail.com/Archives/Digests/199804/1998.04.05.05.html

Here is an interesting view on the subject
"There are further, more in depth, studies based on planetary motion and the harmonic overtones and undertones which do lend further support to the "organic" basis of 432 Hz as a solid foundation for musical structure"
http://www.bobnancy.com/bobnancy.html
If that is too light stuff for you, you might try the following:
http://www.fanaticalfitzhugh.com/essay1.html

If you want to be sceptic all by yourself about history creation, this might be an article to read. It says that "all ``early music'' scholars agree that Mozart tuned at precisely at C=256".
http://www.schillerinstitute.org/music/rev_tuning_hist.html


Well,
   enough for today.

No conclusions so far though.

Gunnar Hellquist
owns a bass trombone

Howzit. Now I'm actually a double bass player at heart, but have delved into trombones a bit.

   I can't find it at the moment, but I have an old Chambers encyclopeadia dated 1926, which I remember discusses Pitch into some detail. I own two Holton Revelations, among others. They are both built within 1928/1929, and the elder is high pitched. Both are tuning in slide models, so are invariable. I think the bells differ too.

   I'm from NZ, which was a british dominion. therefore, politically, we followed british styles. Horrible as it is, the idea of a british brass band (which is different from other countries) was considered working class. Orchestral string players apparently wanted more tension on their strings to cope with the continued development of the wind sections, and higher pitch achieved that. How it became so vastly different - I dunno. Here's a theory. Maybe a can of worms here..........

   To this day, there is an unspoken animosity between orchestral and (british style) brass. British brass uses saxhorns, trombones, fluegelhorns, euphoniums, and no F horns, woodwind or trumpets. So, with orchestral styles, including pitch, being too snooty for the 'masses', what became known as high pitch lasted for years here.

   I learned to play euphonium in c.1997. I borrowed a Besson by Boosey & Hawkes. It was a converted high pitch. This is common here. The back pressure was noticable.

   So with the confusions, companies all over, but especially in America from what I've seen on ebay for example, issued convertable instruments, for years. How long, I don't know.    

   The list (which I can't find) gives different country's versions of pitch. I'll keep looking.  I know America apparently was sitting lower than 440 at the time. But it is a British book. Who knows?

   It should be known that high pitch and low pitch aren't set numbers - they're general terminologies with variable examples. I'll ask the oldies brass guys around here what made them change, or give in to 440. That'll be interesting.

   Someone mentioned organs. Were there variations in the good old 8' pipe then?

   I probably confuddled you more. Sorry!

I'll look for the article.
Sox

[Edward_Solomon]

Funny you should mention (again) the converted/convertible instruments. My old teacher, Maisie Ringham, still has a narrow bore tenor trombone which she had modified by the addition of a quick change rotary valve positioned where one would normally see a rotary valve attachment in the bell section. It was designed to enable her to play in the orchestra and in the Salvation Army (brass) band, the former being low pitch and the latter high pitch. She solved the problem with a simple mechanism that raised or lowered the fundamental pitch of the instrument by setting the valve either open or closed. Worked like a charm!

[Geeky Bone]

I question if there was much of any standard before 1900.  The hz didn't become official until 1933 (according to http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/hertz.htm).

[ghellquist]

Hi Harry,
         you touch on two interesting areas.

First, does it matter if things change names, and secondly what is a standard.

I believe that cycles per second or something like that was around long before it the unit was called hertz. Anyway this is a very small thing.

As for standards, I remember a while ago when I worked as the buyers representative in a small project redecorating an office. In the order we had specified that standards should be adhered to, but had forgotten to specify which standard. In this case the contractor said that the coat hangers in the toilest (now this was a small issue, but still), were of standard issue. When pressed they said that it was the ABH standard, which no-one had heard of before. When further stressed the standard was spelled out as "As Built Here".

So, a standard is not always a standard.

By the way, I´ve had a lot of fun using Google looking for pitch standards. The really fun part is that the sources simply do not agree. So I guess I will simply give up this project.

Gunnar Hellquist
owns a musical instrument, that the producer calls a bass trombone

(And by the way, what is a bass trombone and what is not?).

[john sandhagen]

part of the "pitch problem originates with the way instruments were sold way back.  A brass band was an extention of the factory/mine/foundry etc.  So the factory purchased the instruments, not the player.  Big factory, deep pockets, large ensembles with fancy engraving.

But they were sold as a set...so if you added instrumentation, you had to pay the original maker a premium to match your old set of horns.

When the horns all started to look too worn to make the boss happy or the valves started leaking, they replaced the entire set.  Planned obsolesence.

It was to the Makers financial good to not have a pitch standard.

Note that Yamaha mallet percussion are now pitched at 442 and 440 is only available on special order.  Many flutes and horns are at 445...

Bettr sharp than out of tune,

[svenlarsson]

quote:Originally posted by john sandhagen:

Note that Yamaha mallet percussion are now pitched at 442 and 440 is only available on special order.  Many flutes and horns are at 445...

Bettr sharp than out of tune,

The tuning problem is going to be with us as long as we play acoustic instruments.
The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra is supposed to tune to A 440hz, the mallet
percussion is tuned to 440, and always sound flat. If the mallet persuasion would be tuned to
442 Hz I guess the orchestra would also tune to 442. And the mallet percussion will sound flat, because everybody in the orchestra hates to be flat….
"Many flutes and horns are at 445..."
And they do sound sharp very often.

[Max Croot]

I still have my old Conn 45H, which was made about 1939 and it  came with 2 tuning slides, a high and low pitch. both have 43 stamped on them, but I don't know the significance of the number.  So it wasn't just the British who made high pitched instruments. Regards Max Croot.