[78-L] 78-L Digest, Vol 1, Issue 51

[Chris Zwarg]

>Another problem is that sharps and flats are not the same. The sharp  
>of a note is different than the flat of the note above it. Its five  
>commas up and the flat is five commas down. There are nine commas  
>between regular notes. A singing teacher back around 1800 used a  
>specially built instrument with two black keys instead of one for the  
>sharps and flats. It must have been a challenge to play. It should be  
>pointed out that there are different ways of tuning keyboard  
>instruments. Harpsichords are usually tuned differently for early  
>music. Most singers are slightly out of tune when singing sharps and  
>flats though there are a few who sang true sharps and flats. I  
>suppose one could add to this the problem of double sharps and flats.  
>Many singers had less than perfect pitch. On early recordings many of  
>the singers attack on the pitch rather than below. While this meant  
>that the note was sung at the right time rather than late, it also  
>led to the note occasionally being slightly out of tune. Clearly  
>there are a lot of factors that lead to errors when trying to play  
>records at the right speed.

If you are using a pitchpipe or electronic keyboard instrument to find the correct pitch, you will of course listen for unison with "fixed-pitch" instruments in the accompaniment (eg. piano, harmonium, harp, also orchestral woodwinds - it is not without reason that the oboe is used to give the pitch to other orchestra members when tuning up!). Those checking the pitch at isolated notes of a singer's voice (or a solo instrument) are bound to run afoul of momentary lapses in pitch very common even with highly trained musicians; the natural (not to mention the artificially widened) vibrato of the human voice makes its exact pitch difficult to determine.

The ability to play a little piano (one-handed/two-fingered is quite sufficient for the purpose) to play along with the record helps greatly - if the pitch/speed is correct, the sounds from your keyboard will be in tune with it throughout the piece, not just in isolated spots. In case you have to rely on a constant tone (e.g. a pitchpipe), try sounding the *major fifth* of the printed key - for a piece in C that would be G. In tonally bound music this will be, on average, the most frequent note, so you get the most opportunities to listen for a unison as both of the most common chords (tonic C and dominant G) both contain the note. If you sound "C" for a C-major piece, you will hear a dissonance every time the chord changes to the dominant G which is not helpful for pitching.

>The Tamagno recordings seem to be in groups defined by very slight  
>speed changes. This was clear to a couple of us making tape copies of  
>the published and unpublished records at the Yale library. He was not  
>well when the records were made at his home and presumably they only  
>made a few records each day. We believed that the equipment probably  
>was running at a slightly different speed after sitting overnight.  

Certainly - just like your average wind-up gramophone :o)

>He's an example of an early singer who attacks on the note rather  
>than below.

...and if you listen for the piano, which sounds slightly wavery on many of the sides, you literally hear the imperfections of the speed regulator on the portable recording lathe used to record him in his villa. The "wow" easily has an amplitude of +/- 0.1 rpm, which shows again that it is a futile exercise to "determine" playback speeds accurate to 0.01 rpm, as suggested by the usual two-decimal figures on stroboscopic discs!

Chris Zwarg