Melodeon tuning is a big big area. What i will not do here is go into the minutiae of perfect tuning but will cover off the basics and some techniques. Every facet of tuning is a compromise and so is this page. If this is your first go at it, take your time. You may be surprised at what a difference you can make. Whilst it is no beauty, i still play the first box that i tuned.
Voices and Tremolo
Voices = the number of individual reeds which sound when a note is played
Tremolo= the perceived increase and decrease in volume when two or more reeds of slightly different pitch are played together. Measured in Hz i.e beats per second.
Standard Pitch = the frequency of the reference note which is A4 is 440Hz at modern standard pitch. If you tune to this you will be in tune with most other instruments most of the time. So as with all things tuning this is the best compromise.
Temperaments= . let’s just not go there…..for the purpose of this page ….equal temperament
So . Voices first: typically a melodeon has 1,2 or 3 voices .
One voice.
Just tune the reed to bang on on your tuning app and it will sound pretty good, fine tune in the box.
Two voice.
Once you have decided what rate of tremolo in Hz (i.e how many beats per second) you can achieve this in two ways
- Traditional Tune one half of the reeds to dead on with your tuner, then sharpen the second set of reeds by the correct amount to give you the desired amount of tremolo (this is the traditional way of doing things and is far simpler) or:
- Viennese / Dedic Tune one set to a -ve value and the other to a +ve value so no single reed is perfectly in tune but played together they average at the right pitch. this is called Viennese or Dedic tuning
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Three Voice
For the purposes of this paragraph we are looking at an MMM box . i.e all reeds three play the same octave. If you have LMM the L and one M need to be bang on and the second set of M reeds are tuned as above for the 2 voice. Can of worms time. What most people agree on is that the middle voice reeds should be tuned near to or bang on tune.
The second and third set of reeds can either be symmetrical i.e tuned an equal amount above and below the middle set or asymmetrical i.e one set closer to the middle than the other. Just remember that the aggregated pitch is what you will hear.
These two techniques produce markedly different characteristics to the sound, and the best advice i can give is try it out and see which you like best. Neither is better they are just different and the quality of each is purely subjective
The mechanics of melodeon tuning
Very simply put if you remove material from the tip of the reed, it’s pitch will raise, if you remove material from near the base it’s pitch will lower. EASY!
The debate arises in the manner in which you remove said material. If it is your first go and you have a cheap and unloved victim then you won’t go far wrong with a very fine needle file (cut 2 is pretty good) . As a starter, file the reed at 90 degrees to it’s length.
Checking the pitch
You will need some means of checking the pitch as you tune a reed. You won’t need some big old fancy tuning table but you will need to get inventive, you will need a means of holding your box firmly by the bellows and if you are changing pitches by a large amount >10 cents for instance you will need to make a very simple tuning table .
With this apparatus, a file and a tuner you are good to go
Removing metal
Now the fun begins. For melodeon tuning i use a 2nd cut file and a scratcher to do nearly everything. The only exception being on large bass reeds where i will use a bigger coarser file. the following is a list of stuff that gets used…
- File
- Scratcher
- Sanding pens
- Bits of stick with abrasives stuck to them
- Dremels
- Various assorted Heath-Robinson devices including dentists drills etc etc
Filing
I will normally do all of my tuning using a 2nd cut needle file. I sound the reed. then support it with a thin piece of steel and the file at the tip or 1/4 – 1/3 of the way up from the rivet depending on whether i am raising or lowering the pitch. I file perpendicular to the length of the reed on the outer face. Take great care to ensure that you are filing good and flat, if you don’t you can start getting some strange behaviour from the reed. Try not to get any sharp ridges in the reed. Take it slow . File then check the tone, you will soon get a feel for how much to take off in one go.
Points to note . The smaller reeds have a very thick base end so you file them half way up to lower pitch. be very careful with these it is easy to wreck them and they are the hardest to find a spare for. Debur the edges after filing otherwise you can end up with a fuzzy kind of sound. Use your file very gently to do this either that or a small piece of sharpening stone works well…..dont over do it.
Scratching
Your scratcher needs to be SHARP . An old needle file makes an excellent scratcher if you carefully flatten the end on a whet stone. This technique does need a bit of practice but it is straightforward once you get the feel for it
To lower pitch get the scratcher as flat to the reed as you can and make a good steady gouge along the length of the reed from the middle to the rivet. The shorter and lighter the gouge the less effect it has.
To raise the pitch with a scratcher you can take little short gouges out of the tip of the reed 2-4mm in length the aim of this is to remove material and lighten the tip. Avoid the edges of the reed as you can damage the sound quality by digging lumps out of here. I tend to use a scratcher for raising pitch on the smaller reeds only.
Final Tuning in situ
This isn’t optional!! It took me a long time to realise that the final part of any melodeon tuning job MUST be done with the reeds in their final position, fully waxed and valved. No amount of calculating offsets and error correction will avoid this you just have to learn how to do it. This seems impossible to start with but you soon become adept. If you have been a bit sneaky earlier on and tuned everything just a tiny smidge sharp then some reeds will be fine as they are and others will just need a little scratch to bring them down to pitch, larger reeds up to say F5 . can be sharpened easily enough but those squeaky little buggers are much easier to flatten a bit than sharpen . be warned!
Fine tuning
Melodeon tuning is part science and part art, it has been science up until this bit now you need to trust yourself. At the end of the day this is your box and you want it to sound pleasing to your ear. If all the science has gone to plan you may find that your low notes don’t sound low enough, your high notes sound a touch lifeless, the tremolo at the top end doesn’t sound quite as you expected it to. It is fine …adjust them until they sound right to you…. feel the force .