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[Neil]

While reading another thread, I was struck by this comment from squeezy:

The tuning I have tried to maintain on it is the dryest Niels Nielsen would agree to tune it!  I asked for dry and he point blank refused!  He was probably right.

I have been wondering about this question of tuning since taking up the box. Although I have played with many box players over the years, I always assumed that the reason they sounded out of tune was that boxes were difficult to tune or wandered out of tune; I had no idea that this was a deliberate choice in the tuning process.

Now that I am a convert to the box I was wondering about the history of the different degrees of wetness in tuning. I realise that it is very much a personal preference of players, but is there any other instrument which is deliberately (de)tuned in this way? What are the reasons for doing it?

[Jesse Smith]

It creates a perceived increase in volume and thickness to the sound. It's just like double-tracking a vocal line, or using a chorus effect pedal on an electric guitar. The slightly varying pitch and/or attack of the different sound sources creates a sound that is perceived as a single source, but thickened and with a shimmering or singing effect, depending on how wide the pitch variation is.

Pianos, pipe organs, and quite a few other instruments make use of this effect with very slightly out of tune courses of duplicated strings or reeds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorus_effect

[nigelr]

There's a huge array of posts on here about tuning, but basically one reed tuned to concert pitch and one reed tuned sharp to achieve the tremolo will sound sharp against an instrument like a fiddle tuned to only concert pitch.  I suspect this is what you are hearing.

Many of us here have boxes with Dedic (or Viennese) tuning where one reed is flat and one is sharp by the same degree around concert pitch - the result is a tremolo but with a sound that appears to be concert pitch (the joy of physics!).  I have my Morris boxes tuned to -5/+5 cents which gives a swing (ish) tremolo which is still nice and strident.  Others have very different tuning from dry (both reeds at the same pitch) to full-on Hohner flappy-ness and beyond.  It is very much personal taste.

[Chris Rayner]

As in so many fields in life, it is a matter of taste.  One man’s meat, etc.  Single reed instruments, small melodeons, e.g. Castagnari Lilly, and concertinas do not have wet or dry tuning, they are just tuned.  Larger instruments may have more than one voice, and so there will be a degree of divergence in tuning which adds substance to the sound.  Many plucked string instruments have more than one string to a note, e.g. mandolins, lutes, 12string guitars.  The most extreme example must be the concert organ.

Do far as deliberate variation in tuning is concerned, in the free reed area the Scottish and French musette accordions must be among the most extreme.  When I ventured into the chromatic button accordion territory I had a crack at one or two such instruments.  It took some time for my teeth to return from the edge.

[richard.fleming]

... one reed tuned to concert pitch and one reed tuned sharp to achieve the tremolo will sound sharp against an instrument like a fiddle tuned to only concert pitch. 

If the fiddlers tune to the box, rather than to the gadget, then this should not be a problem as they can tune to the perceived note.

[george garside]

someone ( not me) once described very dry tuned boxes as sounding like a trapped fart trying to get out!  As a fan of wet tuning I am inclined to agree!

george

[MikeK]

Not a pretty sound,I guess

[Mike Hirst]

someone ( not me) once described very dry tuned boxes as sounding like a trapped fart trying to get out!  As a fan of wet tuning I am inclined to agree!

george

An older player I met in the 1970s used to call his v. wet tuned melodeon a sack of bees.

[Anahata]

It creates a perceived increase in volume and thickness to the sound. It's just like double-tracking a vocal line, or using a chorus effect pedal on an electric guitar.

It also vaguely imitates vibrato on a violin or a human voice*. I say vaguely, because the effect of the two reeds combined is actually an amplitude (loudness) modulation, whereas on a fiddle it's the frequency (or pitch) that is changing. The effect on the human listener is quite similar, as it happens.

*Organ or harmonium stops that do this are often called vox humana

[Stiamh]

Apart from the perceived thickness or sweetness of the sound, another significant benefit of the tremolo (however slight) you get from the reeds not being tuned to exactly the same pitch is that the tremolo takes the hard edge off the clash you get in equal temperament, particularly in chords involving the major third. 

I made a clip to try and demonstrate some of the issues involved: https://youtu.be/Gdkb4o7R3-Q

At the 1:52 mark you can hear the difference in sound between one and two voices.

At the 16:50 mark I demonstrate the effect on chords.

[richard.fleming]

someone ( not me) once described very dry tuned boxes as sounding like a trapped fart trying to get out!  As a fan of wet tuning I am inclined to agree!

george

Wet farts v. dry farts. Maybe another thread here? Old farts too, perhaps.

[playandteach]

Apart from the perceived thickness or sweetness of the sound, another significant benefit of the tremolo (however slight) you get from the reeds not being tuned to exactly the same pitch is that the tremolo takes the hard edge off the clash you get in equal temperament, particularly in chords involving the major third. 

I made a clip to try and demonstrate some of the issues involved: https://youtu.be/Gdkb4o7R3-Q

Nice to hear you demonstrate. On my very light swing tuned GC box, the major thirds (right hand - as left hand is 3rd less) do really feel bright, but sound absolutely right in every other context.

[Guy]

As far as deliberate variation in tuning is concerned, in the free reed area the Scottish and French musette accordions must be among the most extreme.  When I ventured into the chromatic button accordion territory I had a crack at one or two such instruments.  It took some time for my teeth to return from the edge.

I thought this as well, until on a trip to Castelfidardo I spent some time with a local organetto player. He lent me one of his instruments, and we played some tunes together in the Accordeon Museum there. I thought that the glass in the display cases was going to shatter....

Cheers,
Guy

[IanD]

... one reed tuned to concert pitch and one reed tuned sharp to achieve the tremolo will sound sharp against an instrument like a fiddle tuned to only concert pitch. 

If the fiddlers tune to the box, rather than to the gadget, then this should not be a problem as they can tune to the perceived note.

But the other problem is that the octaves on the treble end are often not true, and not in tune with the bass end either (they sound sharp).

It's why I came up with what many people now call Dedic tuning (though Nils Nielsen told me afterwards that it used to be called Viennese tuning many years ago but the term and tuning had died out) where the two reeds are equally sharp and flat. On hearing this for the first time a violin-playing friend (who also happens to have perfect pitch) exclaimed "Wow, a melodeon that's in tune!". Happily this idea had now spread since I tried it about 20 years ago, and many people now have melodeons that play in tune, for which many fiddlers and concertina players are grateful.

(one of the most horrible instrument combinations is a sharp-tuned melodeon and a concert-tuned concertina, the out-of-tune high harmonics make for a truly awful sound)

How far the reeds are tuned apart (and how this varies with pitch) is a matter of personal taste; after various trials I settled on around 4bps detuning (+2Hz and -2Hz) across the whole keyboard, other people like less tremolo or to have it vary across the keyboard.

Having one reed tuned to concert pitch and one sharp (even on a 2-reed box with no stops) is really a "leftover" from boxes with multiple reeds and stops, where one reed has to be at concert pitch for when it's played on its own.

[Jesse Smith]

It's why I came up with what many people now call Dedic tuning (though Nils Nielsen told me afterwards that it used to be called Viennese tuning many years ago but the term and tuning had died out) where the two reeds are equally sharp and flat. On hearing this for the first time a violin-playing friend (who also happens to have perfect pitch) exclaimed "Wow, a melodeon that's in tune!". Happily this idea had now spread since I tried it about 20 years ago, and many people now have melodeons that play in tune, for which many fiddlers and concertina players are grateful.

(one of the most horrible instrument combinations is a sharp-tuned melodeon and a concert-tuned concertina, the out-of-tune high harmonics make for a truly awful sound)

Ian, I wonder whether you know if John Kirkpatrick's melodeons have been tuned in Dedic/Viennese tuning? I ask because there are tracks on some of his albums in which he overdubs concertina and D/G melodeon, but also some in which he overdubs a Hohner 114 with a D/G melodeon. And they all sound fine to me! My understanding is that you normally wouldn't tune a 114 in Dedic tuning (like your last sentence mentions), because it would sound terrible if you ever wanted to play just one of the M voices by itself. But maybe JK doesn't do that, and his 4-stops are tuned L/M-/M+/H rather than the usual L/M/M+/H.

[IanD]

It's why I came up with what many people now call Dedic tuning (though Nils Nielsen told me afterwards that it used to be called Viennese tuning many years ago but the term and tuning had died out) where the two reeds are equally sharp and flat. On hearing this for the first time a violin-playing friend (who also happens to have perfect pitch) exclaimed "Wow, a melodeon that's in tune!". Happily this idea had now spread since I tried it about 20 years ago, and many people now have melodeons that play in tune, for which many fiddlers and concertina players are grateful.

(one of the most horrible instrument combinations is a sharp-tuned melodeon and a concert-tuned concertina, the out-of-tune high harmonics make for a truly awful sound)

Ian, I wonder whether you know if John Kirkpatrick's melodeons have been tuned in Dedic/Viennese tuning? I ask because there are tracks on some of his albums in which he overdubs concertina and D/G melodeon, but also some in which he overdubs a Hohner 114 with a D/G melodeon. And they all sound fine to me! My understanding is that you normally wouldn't tune a 114 in Dedic tuning (like your last sentence mentions), because it would sound terrible if you ever wanted to play just one of the M voices by itself. But maybe JK doesn't do that, and his 4-stops are tuned L/M-/M+/H rather than the usual L/M/M+/H.

I don't know what John's boxes are tuned to, but I'm pterry sure all 4-stop 1-rows would be L/M/M+/H for the reason you said. Also the sharpness of pitch/out-of-tuneness is much less obvious with a 4-reed box (3 reeds in concert, 1 sharp) than a 2-reed MM box, which is the worst possible case for showing up the M/M+ problem -- and also (tuned like this) the commonest box in the UK... :-(

I suppose we should be grateful that wet-tuned M/M+ boxes like Hohners used to be are kind of out of fashion, a lot of boxes nowadays are dryer tuned so the problem is much less obvious. If you ever hear one of the old wet-tuned Hohners -- or wet-tuned PA as used for old-style Scottish dance-band music -- played together with a concertina, it makes you want to cover your ears and run away...

[Rog]

thought this as well, until on a trip to Castelfidardo I spent some time with a local organetto player. He lent me one of his instruments, and we played some tunes together in the Accordeon Museum there. I thought that the glass in the display cases was going to shatter....

I have a theory about these super wet tuned Castelfidardo made organettos... The reeds are tuned out of the box, fitted to the flat reed pans with no further tuning. It’s virtually impossible to get any tools in to tune the reeds when they are waxed flat down inside the casing  I had to take them out and temp fit them to sort out the 'factory' tuning. Super wet tuning means you can get away with sketchy accuracy. Which is also the reason why ex factory Hohner tuning is pretty sketchy. Of course the left hand side needs to be good as this does not use multi voices. Anyway, that is my theory.

[smiley]

When I think of a wet-tuned box played with a concertina the first example that comes to mind is Tony MacMahon with Noel Hill,
e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMwwLpHMhbE
I'm not sure if Tony's box has MMM reeds but to my ears they sound great together. Is this the sound that IanD finds so disagreeable?

[Steve_freereeder]

When I think of a wet-tuned box played with a concertina the first example that comes to mind is Tony MacMahon with Noel Hill,
e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMwwLpHMhbE
I'm not sure if Tony's box has MMM reeds but to my ears they sound great together. Is this the sound that IanD finds so disagreeable?

In this example, the music is so fast and busy it is difficult to focus in on the intonation differences between the instruments. Most of the time the ear (well, my ears anyway) tends to focus in on the brightness of the melodeon. However, when there are the occasional long notes at the ends of phrases, the concertina can definitely be heard to be slightly flatter (perhaps perceived as slighly duller) than the melodeon. But overall, there is a spread of pitch differences, a bit like a musette-tuned box played on its own, and for the style and speed of playing in this example, it is pretty much acceptable.

A much more revealing test of these two instruments together would be if they were playing a slow air. Then, I supect the intonation differences between the two instruments would really show up and possibly (depending on your personal tastes/preferences) not in a favourable way. I had a quick listen to other tracks on the same album - You tube gives you a few other examples - and it is perhaps significant that the tracks with slower tunes are either solo concertina or solo melodeon but as far as I can tell, not both together. 
 

[mselic]

I find, to my taste,  that some boxes sound better with more/less tremolo compared to others.  The tonal quality of the instrument seems to make a big difference.  To my ear, instruments with a brighter/harsher tone tend to sound better with less tremolo, while those with a softer tone can get by with more tremolo to give them 'bite'.