About

About this site

By Band Tuning editorial · Facts checked 15 September 2026

Band Tuning is a tuning reference for the instruments of a concert or marching band: brass and woodwind, from the piccolo to the tuba. It answers the questions people bring to a search box, what key an instrument is in, what a written note sounds as, what note the band tunes to and what frequency that is, from published sources, on one sheet per instrument, and it carries a tuner that runs in the browser.

What the site is now

The centre of the site is a set of 10 specification sheets, one for each of the trumpet, trombone, French horn, tuba, euphonium, flute, clarinet, saxophone, oboe and bassoon. A sheet states the instrument's nominal key, its transposition, the concert notes it tunes to in a band routine and every octave of those notes inside its sounding range, its full range note by note with frequencies, a maker's bore and bell figures for its standard models, the other keys and sizes in its family, and a handful of statements from the sources that explain the rest. Every statement carries a numbered citation, and the numbered list at the foot of the sheet gives the publisher, the page and the date it was read.

All frequencies on the site are computed from one standard, A4 = 440 Hz, by the equal-temperament formula f = 440 × 2^(n/12), where n is the number of semitones above A4 (negative below). The same arithmetic runs in the browser tuner, which names the nearest note to whatever the microphone hears and plays each instrument's tuning notes as reference tones. The tuner is the site's own code, uses no library and sends nothing anywhere.

What it was

The domain started in 2024 as a blog with the tagline "your info corner for band instruments". Between March and May of that year it published 89 posts on buying, selling and renting instruments, choosing a first one, reeds, mouthpieces, cases, care, and the differences between related instruments. Those posts stay where they were, at their original addresses, as written, because people still find them through search and because a link to a page should keep working. What changed in September 2026 is the frame: each post now opens with a link to the reference sheet for its instrument, the sheets link back to the posts, and the posts are labelled as the opinion pieces they are rather than as checked facts.

The old site ran on WordPress. This one is static: built once from the data module and the archive, served as plain HTML, with no client-side code on any page but the tuner. That is why the pages are fast and why the frequencies are the same everywhere; a change to the standard or to a source would be one edit, one rebuild.

Who writes it

The sheets and these pages are signed "Band Tuning editorial", which is one person maintaining a reference, not a newsroom. The name is a byline for the method, and the method is on the sourcing page: a statement gets onto a sheet when a published maker, university or standards page states it, and not otherwise. The 2024 posts were written by the site's earlier owners and are attributed to the archive, not to the editorial byline.

What the site does not do

• It does not sell instruments or accessories, and it carries no shop links today. If that changes, the links will sit in a marked box with a disclosure line, and the sheets' figures will not depend on them.
• It does not review products. The maker's figures on a sheet are what the maker prints; they are not a recommendation.
• It does not publish a statement it cannot cite. Where a sheet says "not stated", the sources read for it do not state the thing, and the gap stays open until one does.
• It does not collect anything from the tuner. Microphone audio is analysed in the page and discarded; no recording is made.

Contact and corrections

A wrong figure on a sheet is the kind of error this site exists to avoid, so a report of one is welcome. The sourcing page describes what to send: the page, the figure, and the published source that contradicts it. Corrections are made on the page with a dated note; nothing is silently rewritten. The contact route is on that page as well.