Instrument reference

Band instruments: key, transposition, tuning note

By Band Tuning editorial · Facts checked 15 September 2026

One specification sheet per instrument. Each states the key the instrument is pitched in, what a written note sounds as, the concert note it tunes to in a band's daily routine and every octave of it inside the instrument's range, with frequencies computed from A4 = 440 Hz. Every figure names its source.

The pitch standard is the 440 Hz A adopted at the 1939 London conference and reaffirmed by ISO in 1975; the frequencies follow twelve-tone equal temperament, f = 440 × 2^(n/12), where n is the number of semitones above A4 (negative below). Keys and transpositions come from a university music-theory textbook and a college instrument collection; ranges from the same collection and from a physics department's instrument tables; the tuning routine from a university band-methods handout; bore and bell figures from a maker's printed catalogue. The full list is at the foot of this page and on every instrument page.

Brass

Woodwind

How to read the sheets

Pitched in is the instrument's nominal key: a B♭ trumpet is called that because when it plays a written C, a B♭ sounds. Sounds is the interval between what the player reads and what a listener (or a tuner) hears; instruments in C, such as the flute, oboe and bassoon, read at pitch, and the trombone, euphonium and tuba are written at pitch too even though their tubing is in B♭. Band tuning note is the concert pitch the source's daily routine assigns to the instrument, shown with its highest octave inside the instrument's range; the instrument pages list every octave, the written note for each, and the second tuning note where the routine has one (concert F for the low brass, concert A for the reeds and flutes).

Range is the sounding range as the sources state it, usually a practical range rather than the extreme a professional can reach; where a source gives both, the page says which is which. The browser tuner uses the same data: pick an instrument and it offers these notes as reference tones, and reads the pitch from a microphone against A4 = 440 Hz.

Instruments the archive writes about that have no sheet yet: the recorder and the marching percussion. Neither has a maker or university source in the set read for this site that states its pitch in a way a sheet could carry, so they wait rather than get a page written from memory.