ditions, disaster will surely overtake him, and he will not only find his ears suffering tortures, but will be more than likely to hear uncomplimentary remarks from the neighbors, and will be fortunate indeed not to be ordered on to the next block or the next town by the police force! The difficulty arises, of course, because the oboe, English horn, clarinet, and other wood-wind instruments are built in a certain fixed pitch, and since the length of the tube cannot be altered, they must either play in the pitch intended or else not at all. In the case of the clarinet and flute, the pitch can be altered a very little by pulling out one of the joints slightly (the tube is made in several sections) thus making the total length slightly greater and the pitch correspondingly lower; but when this is done the higher tones are very apt to be out of tune, and in general, if the player has an instrument tuned in high pitch, he cannot play with an ensemble group having low-pitched instruments, especially when the piano supplies the fundamental harmony. In the case of the brass instruments, a tuning slide is usually provided, and the same instrument can therefore be utilized in either low or high pitch combinations.[1]
TUNINGThe conductor of an amateur ensemble group will find it very greatly to his advantage to be able to tune the various instruments, or at least to help the players to do it accurately. This involves not merely a mechanical knowledge of what to do to the instrument to change its pitch, but, what is much more important, a very high degree of pitch discrimination on the conductor's part. It is at this latter point that assistance is most often necessary, and the conductor who can tell his cornet player when he is just- ↑ "High pitch" is employed mostly in bands; the reason for its use being that the wind instruments are much more brilliant when tuned to the higher pitch. It is encouraging to be able to state, however, that more and more instruments are being built in "philharmonic pitch" (a′ 440), and the conductor who is organizing a band or orchestra is advised to see to it that all players who are purchasing new instruments insist upon having them built in this pitch.
