David Lawson wrote: >Can anyone explain to me how pitch was established before there were tuning forks? A very early tuning instruction for strung keyboard instruments said to pull a string up until you think it is about to break, then back off a bit, and there's you starting pitch. Even after tuning forks were invented, there was no means of measuring Hertz or cents. It was easy enough to match the pitches of new forks to a standard fork. Each maker could establish his own pitch standard pretty accurately, but not necessarily standardized to the next builder down the street. >There must have been a method of creating pitch in the early days of harpsichords and pipe organs, what was it? With pipe organs (going back to the Roman Legions) there was no tension, no particularly significant mass to the column of air. There was only the length of the pipe (column of air) to determine the pitch. An 8' pipe (of any diameter or any air intensity) set the pitch. The first rank of pipes had its pitch established by an 8' length of pipe. A rank pitched an octave higher would be a 4' rank, and an octave lower would be a 16' rank. Frank Emerson -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100707/928fbf71/attachment.htm>
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