A 440 Standard

Don A. Gilmore eromlignod@kc.rr.com
Sat, 17 Apr 2004 15:25:33 -0500


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Brekne" <Richard.Brekne@grieg.uib.no>
To: "College and University Technicians" <caut@ptg.org>; "newtonburg"
<pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2004 12:22 PM
Subject: Re: A 440 Standard

> Grin... lets take that basic thought a step futher... Lets say you had A
> 466.  Thats A# when A is at 440.  So everything would be transposed one
> note up. No real problem of the hat... but if you were used to playing
> in 2 #'s and had to go to 3 #'s to get the same thing then what would
> the real point be ??.... just to change fingering ?  And course it get
> more interesting for some other key signatures.

If you raised the key of two sharps (D) up a semitone you would get the key
of Eb (three flats).  Three sharps is A.  My point was that lowering the
string score by a semitone and tuning the orchestra to A-431.73 would allow
the "magical" 457.4 to become available for use for the strings while the
other instruments can tune flat rather than sharp, which is easier/safer.
The conductor and string musicians stop whining about wanting to play
sharper and the tech stops whining about breaking strings in the piano.

Many orchestral parts are for transposing insruments anyway.  If you play
the Bb clarinet your music will not have the same key signature as the
strings do.  Professional musicians don't have any problem sight-reading in
a new key anyway.  That's what we do.

I guess the downside is that if you simply must play a Mozart work so that
his written "A" is indeed 457.4, you're screwed.  Oh well, it looked good on
paper!

> >To raise the pitch from 440 to 457.4 would increase the string tension by
> >about 8%.  If the string had a tension of 150 lbs, this would increas it
by
> >12 lbs.  Multiplied by, say, 215 strings, this amounts to 2600 lbs more
> >compression on the harp!  No thank you!

> Depends on the strings used ... eh ?

Nope.  When you tune a string you don't change the speaking length, nor do
you change the mass per unit length of the string--only the tension.  The
tension for a given string is directly proportional to the square of the
frequency, regardless of string construction and regardless of pitch.

Don A. Gilmore
Mechanical Engineer
Kansas City


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