[78-L] What key is that in?

[Doug Caldwell]

when transcribing music, if I got stuck on an odd chord and wanted to see
what might be layered in there amongst all the murky instruments , I
occasionally used "Transcribe !" Not sure if this is what you're looking
for. It indicates pitches contained in the recording, guesses at what chord
they constitute, and offers pitch-change. I may be wrong but I don't think
it tells you what key your in. 

http://www.seventhstring.com/xscribe/overview.html 

-----Original Message-----
From: 78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com
[mailto:78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com] On Behalf Of Malcolm Rockwell
Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2014 10:46 PM
To: 78-L Mail List
Subject: Re: [78-L] What key is that in?


All well and good if you have an instrument in front of you. I taught myself
to figure out keys by relating what I'm hearing to the resonant frequency of
my chest (C below A440). That never changes. Kinda. When I smoked it was
almost a whole tone (B flat) below what it is now that I've been off tobacco
for around 20 years. The interval between me and the source I am listening
to tells me what key a piece is in. It used to be called "ear training."
Concert orchestras and other musicians generally tune to a standard tone.
Currently it's A440, but it was not always so. Around the turn of the 20th
century there were (at least) three standard pitches. The bitch is that
instruments were manufactured to center around any one of the three standard
pitches and the reason many of the concert orchestras sounded out of tune
is... they were! Mixing an instrument manufactured to an A440 standard with
another set at A426 makes for interesting unisons. You can tune each
instrument somewhat to make up for this but nothing changes the lengths of
the piping on a trumpet - that is a physical fact. The scales will be
slightly off pitch, even with movable fittings on the instrument to adjust
for that.
Pianos have it even worse. They're out of tune (tempered tuning) to begin
with. One reason it's done is so a G flat major scale will sound almost as
good as a C major scale when played. And it's why each key on a piano has
its own "personality." Another reason is psycho-acoustic and takes into
account that the ear hears low notes slightly flat the lower the note is and
slightly sharp the further up the scale one goes (I think that's right, I
could be mistaken and it might be the other way around. It's been awhile
since I've delved into this topic) and the tuner adjusts the pitch
accordingly. Thus the scale is "tempered."
What I was describing is a digital tool that transfer and/or restoration
engineers could use while transferring discs to a digital format. 
Sometimes we're talking microtones off pitch here (fractions of a tone) and
others, well the sky's the limit. I have a recording that was made on a
field trip in 1928. There was something wrong with the lathe set up because
the piece not only began in one key and ended in another (without any key
change in the tune), it was all over the place during the tune. How it ever
got released is anybody's guess. Cleaning it up would be a nightmare.
Malcolm

*******

On 6/8/2014 2:16 PM, Mark Bardenwerper wrote:
> On 6/8/2014 5:59 PM, Malcolm Rockwell wrote:
>> It just occurred to me... how come there isn't an app or a plug-in 
>> for Audacity (or any other audio file modifying software) that 
>> determines the pitch of a file? I'd think doing a quick average of 
>> the first few seconds could determine the key that the start of the 
>> piece is in. Then there might be an option that would allow the 
>> listener to shift the records pitch digitally to raise or lower it so 
>> it's in tune to a set pitch (like A440).
>> Another neat trick would be having the ability to show key changes 
>> within a piece. Maybe like this Part 1 = C; Part 2 = G; Part 3 (1) = 
>> C; Part 4 = Am; Part 5 (1) = C, and so forth. Note that in my example 
>> Parts 1, 3, and 5 have the same key and melody.
>> Just a thought.
>> Malcolm
>> _______________________________________________
>>
> Found this. What do you think?
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bQouq9a_CA
>

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