Reply To: Questions about tuning and stability

#9541
Daren
Keymaster

I think its impossible to tune a melodica to perfection. There’s some things you can bear in mind though to help you:

* Make sure when you tune, its at the same temperature, for accurate comparisons. Some players warm their instruments up first.

* When you start playing your instrument, its likely to be dry. After a few minutes of playing, it will be wet, and after half an hour, its probably saturated. So the first reading will be accurate …for dry reeds. Take a few full readings, of the whole 3 octaves, and you’ll see that by the 3rd or 4th reading, the notes have dropped a few cents. The reeds are slightly wet – this is a good place to start your tuning. The problem is that the moisture on the reeds, that causes the drop in pitch, is unstable, and can lead to very different readings in succession.

I get round this by taking lots of readings, so I have a ‘rough idea’ of wha pitch the reed is at under moist conditions. There isn’t much point in aiming for perfection, because, as you’ve discovered, what’s perfect today, is flawed tomorrow!

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