Absolutely! Couldn't agree more. But I wasn't really talking about inconsistency or carelessness. Rather, I was thinking of the various prevailing standards such as "F" "F#" "a bit sharp of F", "G" and "us lot 'ere all tune to old Fred's chanter 'cos he's the one wot sounds the best".
I would assume that the Reids worked to a chosen pitch standard in the same way as did Silbermann or - more relevant here - the Hotteterre gang. Cheers, Paul Gretton -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Francis Wood Sent: 09 February 2011 10:31 To: Paul Gretton Cc: [email protected] group Subject: [NSP] Re: Tuning/pitch On 9 Feb 2011, at 07:20, Paul Gretton wrote: > So in fact the variety of pitches for the NSP is extremely traditional! Two > hundred years ago it wouldn't have been thought in any way remarkable. Hello Paul and others, I must say, I disagree here. It's often forgotten that the the NSP of two hundred years ago - the conventional fully keyed form - was the product of a single workshop and was played in a relatively narrow geographical area. There's no reason to suppose that Robert and James Reid were careless about the consistency of pitch of their products. No doubt, they would be extremely surprised to know of the latitude in pitch (and indeed tuning) of many of today's pipes. Francis To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
