Frankie
28 posts
Jan 27, 2018
9:42 PM
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Not sure what to choose I know equal temperament and it can be used for Golden melody etc but what about for marine band harmonica what temperament ?
Last Edited by Frankie on Mar 19, 2018 3:14 AM
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SuperBee
5220 posts
Jan 28, 2018
12:58 AM
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If you choose ET then you don’t have to worry about the root note.
If you are looking at a C harmonica, the 1 Blow is Octave 4 as in C4, aka ‘middle C’.
If you have an A harp it will start on A3. The C# in Blow 2 will be C#4.
If you have a D harp it will start on D4
The C# in draw 3 will be C#5.
I recognise the Cleartune app in the last shot. I guess the other shots are also Cleartune. I have that app and it’s ok but I never use it. My Korg is much easier to use.
If you use ET as your temperament you can tune each reed by how many cents you need it to deviate from 0.
Or you can follow Andrew Zajac’s pretty decent approximation of hohners modern marine band tuning.
Andrew puts it sort of like this:
Tune 4 draw to equal 0 at 443hz
Tune 5 draw to equal 0 at 440 hz
Tune 6 draw to equal 0+ a hair (ie plus 1 or 2 cents)
Tune 7 draw to equal 0 at 440hz
Tune 1 draw to match 4 draw
Tune 3 draw to match 7 draw
Tune 8 draw to match 4 draw
Tune 9 draw to match 5 draw
Tune 10 draw to match 6 draw
Tune 4 blow to equal 0 at 442hz
Tune 5 blow to equal 0 at 439Hz
Tune 6 blow to equal 0 plus 1 or 2 cents at 442 hz
Tune 1 blow to match 4 blow
Tune 2 blow to match 5 blow
Tune 3 blow to match 6 blow
Tune 7 blow to match 4 blow
Tune 8 blow to match 5 blow
Tune 9 blow to match 6 blow
Tune 10 blow to match 7 blow
Tune 2 draw with reference to 3 blow but mind Steve Baker’s advice as posted elsewhere to tune 2 draw a little sharper than 3 blow to compensate for the tendency to flatten draw notes in play more than blow notes.
This also is the reason for tuning the Blow plate at 442 and 439 in comparison to the draw plate at 443 and 440.
This is a good method to use with a guitar type tuner as those are generally pretty good at showing when you are bang on the pitch but become less accurate as you get further away from 0. You should also check you’re octave splits once you’ve assembled the harp and adjust as necessary. Andrew describes a way to work out which reed needs to change in which direction.
You should reed his article about tuning a harp using a guitar tuner and your ears. Then you’ll know everything I know.
Last Edited by SuperBee on Jan 28, 2018 1:05 AM
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Frankie
30 posts
Jan 28, 2018
6:07 AM
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Thanks for your help my question was not about tuning the harmonica but rather how to know the current tuning so If I want to document my A harmonica current tuning in my iStrobosof tuner I have the following settings
Temperaments : For A harmonica do I need to choose the root as A ?
then in Transpose/Capo do I need to change the settings?
Also 442. HZ ?
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SuperBee
5223 posts
Jan 28, 2018
12:38 PM
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I think you don’t need to start a new thread for every new question you have about tuning.
Maybe it would be easier to follow along that way.
I am interested that you seem to have posted photos of Cleartune and perhaps also istrobosoft.
I think you’ve misunderstood my post.
I was suggesting that you set the tuner to ET. Then you don’t have to worry about setting a root note.
If you are attempting to use a different temperament, but not a preset ‘harmonica sweetener’, you will need to give the tuner enough information to do the job.
So if you were using Pythagorean Just temperament and tuning a C harp, you will set the root note to C when tuning the blow plate and to G when tuning the draw plate.
This is so that the tuner can calculate the offsets for other note in the chord relative to the root note.
The tuner does not know you are tuning a harmonica in this case, you are tuning a chord and it could be any instrument
If you use the ‘harmonica sweeteners’ with istrobosoft, that’s different.
I don’t think you are doing that. If you were, you’d have different questions.
I also think you’re not following up my suggestions about where to find information on tuning.
Please understand that anything I tell you here is just a diluted retelling of those sources.
For information about how to use istrobosoft I recommend contacting the developers at their published contact point.
Also I’ll strongly suggest reading Andrew Zajac on tuning for some real life examples. But also do read Pat Missin and do go search Kinya Pollard’s forum on blues harmonica dot com for the discussion on istrobosoft. Its enlightening in more than 1 way.
And get hands on. Read everything you can on the topic and think about it.
I have only been tuning harps for about 4 years. I tune far more for other people than I do for myself. I’m still learning about it.
It can be frustrating.
In other threads I’ve tried to spell out some of the variables and I’ve made suggestions for resources you can use.
I don’t have anything more to offer.
When you tune a harp you will find your questions become more focused.
I appreciate it can be confusing at first. This is why I’m pointing you above to a method to tune your marine band using a tuner set to ET.
This method gives very good results. I use it as the starting point for 90% of my jobs tuning marine band and sp20 harps.
Once you’ve used it and understand it, then adapt it or do something else, but you’ll have a much better grounding.
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SuperBee
5224 posts
Jan 28, 2018
12:58 PM
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I just looked at the first link in your OP again
For your marine band there is no temperament on that screen shot which will deliver the published temperament of a modern marine band.
The closest option would be ‘standard just intonation’ but that’s not been used in marine band since the 50s
The best option is to use ET as the setting and find your offsets by a different method.
This also means you don’t have to worry about the root note because all the notes will be shown as related to ET. The tuner won’t be trying to tune a chord, just notes. And you can make the decision about how many cents flat or sharp each note will be
That is, there is no suitable option on that shot to which you linked, by which to tune a marine band using 0 as the target for each note, so you may as well go with ET and then you will have a solid reference by which to base your own decisions.
Or you can use the very practical method I outlined above, using a guitar tuner, to get your marine band in tune.
If you want to use ‘standard just’, then you need to set the root note according to the name of the chord you are tuning.
I do not believe you need to go near the transpose/capo setting when tuning this way.
It’s different if you have the sweeteners and that is one reason why I referred you to the Kinya Pollard forum. You’ll see there that Kinya did not know how to use the sweeteners and eventually the good info was obtained from the people at Peterson.
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Frankie
32 posts
Jan 29, 2018
7:23 AM
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Thanks guys for being patient with me. OK I purchased Sweeteners Harmonicas for my Istrobosoft
So this is my settings
Sweeteners is set on the last option : 1867 Marine band/Special20 tuning for Harmonica in C
Concert A is 442
But I can see in sweeteners:
Original marine band tuning and other marine band too so not sure what sweetner I should choose
OMB , MMB ?
What if I use crossover ?
Last Edited by Frankie on Jan 29, 2018 10:10 AM
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SuperBee
5226 posts
Jan 29, 2018
2:21 PM
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That is totally your decision. It depends what you want.
Personally I use modern marine band.
Original marine band is like 7 limit Just Intonation. The flat 7th s are very flat. (5 and 9 draw)
I posted a link in one of your other threads which shows the offsets for the various temperaments. It shows you the offsets for each hole. You’ll see the Crossover temperament is quite close to ET.
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