In practice, it's mostly instinctual, and, also, for modern wind instruments,
tuning is cloesly connected to tone quality - by trying to get the best colour
on a note, there's a strong likelihood of it being in tune too. By contrast, I
recently took up baroque flute, and playing it in tune is desperately hard, not
only because the instrument is innately afflicted that way, but because I have
yet to learn what each note sounds like, when in tune.

Re loudness effects: the phenomenon has been reported in psycho-acoustic tests,
where a tone played at full volume (through speakers or headphones) is perceived
as dropping in pitch, compared to the same tone played softly. It is easy to
explore this with headphones, for example. Many musicians exploit this,
unconsciously or ortherwise, by playing quiet notes a little sharp, to suggest
even greater quietness. Of course, quiet notes have little acoustic energy, and
are thus less likely to clash with other sounds. Loud sharp notes are much more
apparent! Unfortunately, it happens all too often, as performers attempt to get
more power and brilliance in their sound. Most musicians are guilty of this from
time to time, but string-players seem especially susceptible - they take their A
from the oboe, and then play sharper anyway... :-(

Also, if you are singing, you are presumably singing the melody, and you may
simply be using what I call the 'melodic' scale, rather than the 'harmonic'
scale. The former is Pythagorean, and has high thirds, sixths and sevenths
(especially in ascending passages), whereas the latter is mean-tone with small
(pure) thirds, etc. It is also more remote from equal temperament, and thus for
many singers much more difficult to achieve. It's a BIG topic! The real trick, I
have found, is to discover what the legitimately 'mobile' notes are, which you
can then place slightly higher or lower in pitch, for expressive effect. This is
usually very context-dependent. Many singers pitch the minor third too low, and
drop desperately in tuning thereafter. Similarly, if the major third or seventh
is pitched too high (which it might well be for expressive reasons), but the
folowing semitone is also too wide, then your overall pitch has just gone
through the barrier. Indian classical musicians are the consummate experts in
this art - helped by the fact they have a secure drone to work with, and nothing
so tiresome as equal temperament to muddy the waters.

To bring this topic a little more into the Csound fold, perhaps there is a need
for an opcode to reconfigure the cpspch calculations, for different scales?


Richard Dobson

Paul Winkler wrote:
> 
> Good God! Richard, I can't imagine trying to play in those
> circumstances! I have a hard enough time dealing with being in a rock
> band where all the pitched instruments are pretty much fixed intonation.
> (except voice of course).
> 
> Which reminds me of another curious phenomenon -- has anyone else
> noticed apparent pitch changing as a function of volume? I can hear as
> much as a quarter-tone shift when we go from a loud part to a quiet part
> -- it's vivid at the time, but nonexistent on tapes of the event (which
> of course are listened to at much lower volume). But the tape does
> reveal that I'm singing hopelessly sharp on the loud sections, by trying
> to match the upward shift I hear! This happens to me all the time,
> though I'm slowly learning to compensate. Am I just crazy?
>