Allen wrote:A good player will be able to play an instrument in tune, even though the centers of resonances in the instrument are not exactly on the notes the musician wants to sound.
Of course, there's the other sort of player we're all familiar with, one who mashes down the buttons corresponding to the official fingering of the note, blows into the instrument, and discovers the sound the instrument makes.
There is a third category: Musicians who control their pitch adequately, but choose a different pitch for a different reason. The correct pitch will depend on the scale degree and a whole variety of other things that are beyond my understanding. Most people, even good players, try to make their contribution to the chord sound as good as possible in real time. We've already heard reports of quintets with skilled players who still don't make good choices about which pitch to play. Some skilled players have trained their pitch sense by sitting in front of a tuner to the extent that the sound in their head is equally tempered, with all the associated compromises.
I agree that musicians who can play in tune will make whatever adjustments are necessary. But I also suspect that playing in tune in the keys they are more accustomed to might require a bit less work than playing in tune in keys they are not accustomed to, especially if they do a lot of slide-pulling. And more especially if they really do try to make those chords resonate instead of playing an equally tempered scale.
And some instruments are not controllable in terms of pitch, as you know. I suspect some of these traditional views about the sounds of particular keys grew out of keyboard instruments that don't have controllable pitches. As you know, most of them were tuned to favor the more common keys, given that equal temperament is a sub-optimal compromise.
Rick "who has seen pros rehearsing with a tuner running on their stands" Denney
