What is High Pitch

The pitch tone or normal tone, is in music theory the tone a' from the single-line octave, with the scientific name A4, the pitch of which was internationally established in London in May 1939 at a frequency of 440 Hz. This was done by a group of scientists and musicians from Germany, England, France, Italy and the Netherlands. Switzerland and the United States.

All instruments are now tuned so that the A4 is set to 440 and sometimes 442 Hz.  Until the 1970s, some wind orchestras played in a 'high tuning', which is often a quarter tone higher (for the A, that is approximately 453 Hz) than normal. Often the tuning is indicated on the instrument. Normally "low pitch" or "L" and high tuning "High pitch" or "H".

If you buy a high pitch or high tuning instrument, you can play it very well alone and togerther with other high pitched instruments. But playing together with other musicians with a standard tuned instrument is a problem. That is why it is not advisable to buy such an instrument. On the other hand, you can get good quality instruments for little money.

Attention

In Europe, you should pay particular attention to instruments that were used by harmony orchestras before the 1970s. I mainly see a lot of Amati, Schenkelaars and Dolnet instruments with a high tuning.

Measure the pitch

With the checklist above you can measure the distance between the high B and low D key to determing the pitch. You can download a pdf version of credit card size here. 

Why does adjusting your mouthpiece not help?

It is possible to adjust to mouthpiece in such a way that certain tone do tune. In practice you should place the mouthpiece e.g. 20mm less further on the neck. For one tone that would correct the distance between mouthpiece and tonehole perfectly. But all tones between that tonehole and the mouthpiece the correct of 20mm is way to much. Espially for the highest tones. The will be flatter and flatter.  For all tones further from the tonehole the correction of 20mm is too little. The tones will be sharper.

Is this check reliable

The values ​​for alto soprano and tenor were very consistent for the saxophones in my collection. However I found also a bariton that would be questionable according to the checklist that played easily in tune.