Wives tales ... violin tuning

[Stéphane Collin]

It is a complicated matter.

Some violinists, when playing in quatuor, take long time to adapt their
pitch to the others, that is altering the note they would play if they
played alone in function of what and how the other players are playing.
Then comes the problem of the open strings on a violin, which you can't
alter in pitch at play time, only at tuning time.  Curiously enough, most of
the violinists tune their open strings in pure fifth.  But most of them
search for pure intervals when playing together, forcing them to tweak all
the time, depending on the piece's modulations.  All this rewarding work (it
makes the music sound well) is ruined when they play with a piano.  Hence
the feeling that it is the piano that is false, which, depending on how you
look at it, is very true.
Most noticeable is that all this tweaking happens intuitively.
And when they play with brass instruments, it goes a step further in
boogaloo-woogaloo, because brass instruments do go high in pitch when they
warm up.  Strings should follow them then, but if a piano is in the scene,
well, they are caught between two fires.  That is why, I think, brass use to
tune a bit low at the beginning of the concert, so they end up a bit high at
the end of the concert, and all other instruments can blame them never to be
right on pitch, was it at the beginning or the end of the concert (which
they don't care, because after the concert they like more having a good beer
than having a pain conversation with violinists).
Harmony is the master word.  Harmony comes from the clashing of the
opposites.

Best regards.

Stephane Collin.




-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf
Of Richard Brekne
Sent: lundi 30 juin 2008 0:17
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Subject: Wives tales ... violin tuning

Yes... a good sense of relative pitch memory is an interesting thing 
indeed. Its just that it would be best for all concerned if it were kept 
better in perspective... i.e. words like Perfect and Absolute left out 
of it. Severely extreme cases of pitch sensitivity are more a handicap 
then an asset. Fortunately... there are very very few on this planet 
that actually suffer to that degree....and correspondingly few that 
could with any hint of justification fnyss at someone else for erring 
<<absolutely>> pitchwise.

Cheers
RicB