Yes - the great instrument that is the Harpsichord.

I can play it but have never had a lesson on it. I have taught myself - the theory being that If I can play organ and piano then the Harpsichord should be easy.

I cannot tune it either which is annoying when none of the Harpsichords are in tune.

So why am I going to be playing Harpsichord in a music competition for the chance to win £500?

I dont really know.
I entered the competition so excited. Now with 3 weeks to go and not an intune Harpsichord in sight things are looking bleak.
The only Harpsichord tuner is away for a week which is annoying because when he is back I am away (well to be precise, back home from Uni for Easter).

The competition is the first week back after Easter and I cant wait

I am not studying Harpsichord so am not allowed into the 'Harpsichord Room' to play on the French one worth over £37,000.
I have to make do with the other ones which aren't intune because the University cannot afford to pay for a tuner because the Government have slashed their budget.

I cannot wait for the competition. I would love to pull out but still turn up, walk on stage and say -

''I am quiting the competition because the Harpsichord isnt in tune because the University is Broke''

Please help me before I curl up and die. I am in despair. What do I do. I have had people moaning at me because I dont tune my Harpsichord. When I tell them that it's because I taught myself and have never had a lesson they wonder why I am entering a competition on an instrument I have never been taught on.

oh well. I'll still go ahead and hope that I win either the 1st 2nd or 3rd prize. It would ruin my reputation if due to the Harpsichord my playing standard was diminished.

END!!

Oh dear, you do sound down.

First thing, do you have an electronic tuner? If not, they are not very expensive and quite helpful when you learn to tune the harpsichord.

Second thing, when I get home, I'll ask Mr. Flutecake which book he got his tuning instructions from and post the title here. He is also self-taught on it, but he does his own tuning which usually takes about half an hour of twanging. I think if you play an instrument like this you really have to be able to tune it yourself.

There are some resources on the internet, a quick google search has brought up this (there's a drop-down box with tuning hints)

Would any of the contacts on here be helpful? http://www.harpsichord.org.uk/
Maybe even a lesson to point out anything harpsichord-specific that you may not be aware of before your competition?

Finally, best of luck.

I can't quite understand your assumption that being able to play piano and organ would enable you to play the harpsichord without tuition - the touch is very different from either of those, and it does need a different approach to articulation too. I do think that any player of harpsichord does ultimately need to learn to tune it - and unfortunately, a meter won't really teach you to do that properly, because a good tuning technique involves cross-checking fourths and fifths as you go as well, and most people using a meter will only tune octaves. I think that if you are so concerned for your reputation, then you need to consider if you are really ready to take part in the competition. To turn up and thrash around blaming your instrument might actually come across as you attempting to prepare an excuse in the event of not achieving the prize you seem to feel entitled to.

You posted about this last December. You said then that you could compete on any instrument and in any style, and I asked you why you'd chosen the harpsichord when you couldn't play it, your instruments being organ and piano. You've ploughed ahead with learning the harpsichord, but what made you think you'd get up to the required standard to compete, in 3 months? As others have said it requires a different technique. I don't think starting to learn the instrument is a waste of time - you are acquiring a new skill and that on its own is well worth it. I just question why you thought you'd be able to compete on it after such a short time.

This is an April Fool right?

When you learn to play an instrument (apart from piano or organ), you learn to tune it as well. Harpsichordists tune their own instruments before each performance. Surely a music department wouldn't get a tuner in?

I'm going to use that excuse next time I have to play the viola or violin in public and I haven't learned my stuff properly!

Organistno1, are you related to Bernie, by any chance?

Harpsichords do happen to be in the grey area between other instruments and pianos or organs - certainly the professional performances held here would be tuned for by a proper tuner, but harpsichordists do need to know how to tune too. The music department here gets its instruments tuned by my husband on a regular basis.

Oh, and £37k is somewhat steep for a harpsi - even a French double...

If you're coming home from university for easter, could you not go and visit your old organ teacher and play his harpsichord for a while? From what he was telling me, he's recently got a new one, so it will be in brilliant condition.

Good luck with your performance.

Jacob.

Something we are all wondering.



Yes, sorry for any misinformation. The meter is handy, but Mr Flutecake has now explained to me how he checks the fourths and fifths. His books are all in German, so I don't know if they will be of any use to the original poster.



Well in that case, go and speak nicely to him, get him to show you how to tune it and ask him to listen to your competition pieces.

I would expect a serious performer of 16th to 18th C. harpsichord music to tune the harpsichord for each piece, taking into account both the composer and the key when choosing the temperament, which would not be equal: equal temperament is much less satisfactory on harpsichords and clavichords than it is on pianos, because of their richer timbres, with strong fifth partials. One can obtain tables that show for each temperament how each note of the scale should differ from the equal temperament of the electronic tuner.

Some of the easier temperaments are fairly straightforward to produce by ear. For instance, to produce quarter-comma meantone, the main tuning system for keyboards up to c. 1650, in the key of C, one narrows the fifths (or widen the fourths) F-C-G-D-A so that the major third, F-A, sounds smooth and the other intervals equally rough. B becomes a smooth major third above G; of the remaining notes, four usually represent C#, Eb, F# and Bb, and are tuned as major thirds above or below A, G, D and D respectively. The remaining one is chosen to be Ab or G#, depending on how far the piece modulates, or given a compromise tuning if both E major and Ab major triads occur (neither is likely in Renaissance and early Baroque music based on C). For 18th C. music, in which modulations range more widely, more complicated temperaments* are preferable, and an electronic tuner saves a lot of time, study and thought.

* Quarter-comma meantone makes some keys unusable. "Well-temperaments", characterised but not specified in the 18th C., distribute the roughness over the keys in such a way that every key is usable but the home key sounds smoothest.

Easier to find the best suitable compromise tuning for the particular programme chosen, I think - given that a harpsichord takes at least ten and probably nearer twenty minutes to tune, and that they don't much like being tweaked about too madly...
If used lazily, electronic tuners will still not produce great results - anyone tuning a harpsichord in any temperament needs to understand what they're doing and why to do a good job. The technician needs to know about counting beat rates to get the right result - all keyboard tunings are a matter of compromise, and so beating intervals have to be tuned - the trick being to put the most discordant "out of the way", so that the rest of the music may sound more in tune. I'd agree though that a meter can be a useful reference tool especially for later music - it's just that relying on them won't necessarily produce as accurate or pleasing a result as you might expect. I've certainly seen a harpsichord tuner lick a harpsi into shape by ear more quickly and accurately than an experienced meter-user on the same instrument.

Yes, an experienced tuner will do it better and quicker. 17th and 18th C. temperaments were invented and produced by musicians with no electronic aids. A good piano tuner tries to minimise the change in timbre across the changes in construction - e.g. one to two to three strings per note - and allows for the departures of string partials from harmonic frequencies, which no electronic tuner can detect, AFAIK, though it can be used to show what the tuner has achieved. I expect similar subtleties occur in harpsichord tuning. However, an electronic tuner provides the sort of safety net that a beginner may need to give him confidence to try this challenging exercise.