Editorial policy

How tunings are sourced

By Band Tuning editorial · Facts checked 15 September 2026

Every key, transposition, range, tuning note and maker's figure on an instrument sheet is read from a published page, cited by number, and dated. Every frequency is computed from one pitch standard by one formula. This page states the rule, lists what counts as a source, and says what to do when something is wrong.

The rule

A statement gets onto a sheet when a published source states it, and the sheet names that source. The sources are of four kinds, and a sheet uses all four:

1. A maker's own printed specification. Bore, bell diameter, key and system for the standard and intermediate models come from the maker's catalogue, as printed. The site uses one maker's 2024 wind catalogue because it covers every instrument here in one document; the figures are the maker's description of its own models, not a recommendation of them.
2. University and college teaching pages. Transposition comes from an open music-theory textbook published by a university library; ranges, fundamentals and the construction of each instrument from a college's musical-instrument collection, which describes each instrument it holds; the band tuning routine and the pull-and-push adjustments from a university band-methods handout.
3. A physics department's reference pages. The pitch standard, its history and the equal-temperament arithmetic, and a second table of playing ranges.
4. The maker's instrument guide for statements about families, tuning mechanisms and history where the catalogue's tables do not say.

Publishers cited on the site today: Georgia State University, Department of Physics and Astronomy; Texas A&M University Libraries; Grand Valley State University, faculty pages; Yamaha Corporation of America; Yamaha Corporation; Grinnell College Libraries. 41 pages in all, each read on 15 September 2026. The full list for any sheet is at its foot.

What is computed, not copied

Frequencies. The standard is A4 = 440 Hz, adopted at an international conference in London in 1939 and reaffirmed by the International Organization for Standardization in 1975. The formula is f = 440 × 2^(n/12), where n is the number of semitones above A4 (negative below): each semitone multiplies the frequency by the twelfth root of two. Every figure in hertz on the site, on the sheets and in the tuner, is that formula applied to the note's distance from A4, rounded to two decimals. Where a source prints its own frequency for a note (the physics department's range table does), the site's computed figure is used on the sheet and the source's figure is left in the source; at two decimals they agree.

Note names follow scientific pitch notation, C4 for middle C, with flats written as the band world writes them (B♭, E♭, A♭, D♭) and sharps only where a source uses one (F♯, C♯). "Concert" or "sounding" pitch is what a listener hears; "written" pitch is what the player reads.

What does not count

• Memory, including the memory of people who have played these instruments for decades. A tuning note "everyone knows" is not on a sheet until a page states it.
• Forum threads, shop listings, video descriptions and encyclopaedias that anyone can edit. They may be right; they are not citable here.
• The site's own 2024 posts. They were written before this policy and are kept for the reasons given on the archive page; a sheet never cites a post.
• Another site's tuner or chart, however good. The figures here are recomputed, not transcribed.

When a source does not state something, the sheet shows "not stated" in that cell. That is why the saxophone rows carry keys but no bore figures, and why two instruments the archive discusses, the recorder and the marching percussion, have no sheet: the sources read for this site do not state their pitch in a form a sheet could carry, and a sheet written to fill the gap would be a sheet written from memory.

The archive

The 2024 posts were written by the site's earlier owners as a blog about band instruments. They are kept at their original addresses, byte for byte, because a link should keep working and because search engines still send readers to them. They are labelled "archive post" at the top, carry a link to the sheet for their instrument, and end with a note that they were not checked against the sheet's sources. Prices, brand opinions and buying advice in them are 2024 opinions. If a post is found to state something a sheet contradicts, the post is not edited; the sheet is the reference.

Bylines and people

Sheets and site pages are signed "Band Tuning editorial". No page on this site carries an invented author, a stock portrait or a made-up credential. Where the previous site named contributors, those names are not carried over, because the site cannot verify them; the posts are attributed to the archive.

Shop links

There are none today. If the site adds them, they will appear only inside a box headed "Where to buy" or similar, with a one-line disclosure that the site may earn a commission, and with the link marked as sponsored to search engines. A sheet's figures will never depend on whether a product is for sale, and no maker's model is listed because it is sold.

Corrections

To report an error on a sheet, send the page address, the figure you believe is wrong, and the published source that contradicts it, to the corrections address, which is published here once the site's mail is set up (it is not yet). A confirmed error is fixed on the page with a dated note under the sources block; a disputed one is noted as disputed with both sources named. The tuner's detector is code, and a wrong reading is a bug: the same address will take those, with the instrument, the note played and what the readout showed.

Checked 15 September 2026. This policy applies to the 10 instrument sheets, the instruments index, the tuner and the front page.