Organ Canada Tuning Part1

Organ Tuning: Part 1

by John Coenraads

Unlike an electronic organ, a pipe organ needs regular tuning, preferably twice a year with touch ups in between. But in this “weakness” also lies the glory of the instrument; nothing else thrills like a chorus of independent, breathing pipes. If you have been tempted to do touch up tunings yourself, then this article is for you. In Part 1, we examine tuning apps and in Part 2, we will summarize some of the advice Grant Smalley gave in his presentation to RCCO members in Victoria.

Not so long ago, all organs were tuned by ear. One might think that this is an art requiring a golden ear. Not so. Tuning a well tempered clavier is pure science and requires only the ability to hear and count beats.  When I acquired a small harpsichord, I decided to prove this by tuning it from first principles using only an A440 tuning fork, a calculator and a piece of paper. After calculating the frequencies and harmonics of the various notes, I determined the intervals which involved harmonics that could be tuned against each other and by counting beats, worked my way around an octave. My Yamaha tuner confirmed that the results were virtually dead on, but the procedure is tedious and fraught with possible errors. I've never tuned this way again, and when tuning my pipe organ back in the late 1970s, I always relied on a Conn Strobotuner “rescued” from a dusty closet in the music department of the school where I was teaching. With its toasty tubes, spinning disc and flickering neon light, I am not sure how many readers still recall this electromechanical marvel. It had to be one of the very first visual tuners. Nowadays, I recommend that you download its modern equivalents on either your iPhone or iPad. Any modern tuner will generate tones of any pitch you may dial in, but what makes a tuner a visual tuner is its ability to listen to a note, measure its frequency and give you a visual indication of how many cents sharp or flat it is. Is this helpful? Very! 

Never just walk into an organ with the tuner set to A440 and start tuning. You'll end up having to tune every pipe in the instrument. Your first job, always, is to sit down at the console and determine the overall pitch level of the instrument on that day, at that temperature. And if one division has been overheating due to an incoming sun or another division has spent the night soaking up the cold from an exterior wall, you might want to come back once the temperatures in the various divisions have equalized. Now perch your iPad on the music rack and with the tuner set to A440, try out some ranks (flues only) and get a sense of the general pitch level of the instrument. Then pick a pipe whose tuning agrees with the general consensus of the other pipes and adjust your tuner to this reference pitch. This is done by having it “listen” to that note or you can type in its frequency, 437.8 Hz for example if your reference tone happens to be middle A. 

Unless you are experienced and know what you are doing, I recommend that you wait until Part 2 before actually going into the organ chamber. In the mean time, download some of the following apps and start playing with them. There may be user manuals online but I enjoy figuring them out by “pushing buttons.” Some are free, some cost a few dollars, the Peterson tuner cost me $16.

1. Pano Tuner: The basic version is free and I like its simple and intuitive display. Touching the button labelled “i” gives you access to various parameters you may wish to adjust. An upgrade gets rid of the banner ads and includes additional temperaments.

2. ClearTune: This is a very impressive and versatile tuner with a clear and precise display. It includes a host of temperaments ranging from Aron-Neidhardt to Zarlino.

3. StroboSoft by Peterson: With Peterson's well earned reputation in the pipe organ switching business, it is not surprising that this is perhaps the most professional of the inexpensive tuners. As its name suggests, it mimics the appearance and behaviour of a stroboscopic tuner. Its visibility from many feet away lets you plant and leave it in one location as you move from pipe to pipe. An upgrade increases its ability to handle an extended frequency range and, I am told, is well worth it and a boon for those of us beginning to suffer from high frequency hearing loss.

4. TunerPro: I downloaded this tuner and discovered that it is useful if you own a guitar, ukelele or violin. There is nothing to recommend it for use with an organ.

5. PitchLab: Your first reaction when you see the display may be, “What the ...” But it's actually a well reviewed and well engineered piece of software. What is unusual about the display is that although the left column tells you all you need to know, on the right is a display showing not only the fundamental waveform but also five or six harmonics. Very cool!

6. Organ Tuner: At $229.99 I could not afford to try this tuner. For the professional, it offers a multitude of features including the ability to tune mutations and mixtures and assist in voicing.

Even if a professional uses a tuner to tune the reference rank (normally a 4 ft. principal), he or she can probably tune faster by ear than by fumbling with a visible tuner. But for the amateur, a visible tuner has several advantages. Even just sitting at the console, you can quickly run through a rank and determine where the tuning problems are. Since you are always only tuning a single pipe at a time against the tuner, tuning errors cannot “percolate” through the organ. As we'll see in Part 2, a visible tuner can be a real asset when tuning harmonic-corroborating stops. Also the tuner always indicates whether the pipe you are tuning is sharp or flat, so if it is flat, for example, you know right away that the collar on a flue pipe, or the tuning wire of a reed, needs to be tapped down. And finally something worth considering when you are tuning reeds: you can wear hearing protection when using a visible tuner which will save your ears.

Image Captions:

Image 1:   The Pano Tuner with its retro brass and wood display (complete with annoying advertising banner) is simple and easy to use.

Image 2: The ClearTune impresses me every time I use it because of its easy to read “cents error” display here reading 5 cents flat.

Image 3: Peterson's software tuner has the feel of a classic stroboscopic tuner and is very precise and intuitive.