For one of our concerts this week, we are borrowing a harpsichord that we will need to transport to the regional town that we will be playing at. It currently lives at a church in a side room, and the temperature isn't well regulated... the room gets quite cold in the night, and that means that the tuning tends to wander higher as the steel wires contract. In fact, when I went in last night it was about 10-15 cents high (100 cents make up an equal tempered semitone).

So, I have to go in a few times this week to "train" the harpsichord to the pitch and temperament that we want to perform at. If we leave this for only the concert day, then it is likely that the pitch will wander back upwards whilst we are playing and the temperament will wander all over the place. And as the different thicknesses of the wires and the body won't be uniformly changing due to the changing temperature and humidity, it won't be easy to predict where things will be... other than the fact that it will be pretty randomly out of tune within a few minutes!

Needless to say, that isn't a great experience for performers or the audience! So, I will be dropping in to "train" it... essentially tuning it as often as possible, so that it isn't crazily far off where we want it and that it has time to "settle" into the desired temperament and pitch... even though it is still a room with fluctuating temperature!

To be sure that I'm disturbing others who might want to use either the church, the anteroom, or the various music concert venues around the church I tend to go in the middle of the night... well, not quite the middle of the night, around 10 or 11pm. And that can be a touch spooky in a big big building with no one around in the darkness... and when you are tuning, you are quite focused and more than a bit aware of every little sound! And if you have followed my blog... you will know that I'm a big chicken when it comes scary movies and games... and this is more than enough to let my mind and imagination wander a bit more than it should.

Anyway, it is something that needs to be done... my wife usually drops in in the morning when she is in the area... and I get the evening shift. And it is good that I took this photo... I couldn't remember how the base was constructed... and we will need to dismantle it to transport it in a larger car. Screw on legs... which is good, I was starting to fear that it had a more solid base that would require a ratchet to dismantle.

So, for those who are curious... we are using a pitch of A=415Hz... the "modern" standard for Baroque period performance... although, we can go from 392Hz up to 466Hz in that period of music!

And the temperament is a variant on a Werckmeister description from the time period.... it is what I'm used to, even though it isn't really used much in Australia!

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