page_title: Pitch pipe
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Pitch pipe / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: Variable Pitch pipe .
context_page_description: A pitch pipe is a small device used to provide a pitch reference for musicians without absolute pitch. Although it may be described as a musical instrument, it is not typically used to play music as such. Technically, it is a harmonica; however, it lacks many characteristics of harmonicas.
context_section_description: The earliest pitch pipes were instruments rather like a recorder, but rather than finger holes, they had a plunger like a slide whistle's (also known as a swanee whistle). The pipe was generally made of wood with a square bore, and the plunger was leather-coated. On this plunger are marked the notes of either the chromatic scale or the diatonic scale, and by setting it to the correct position, the indicated note will be produced when the instrument is blown. Pitch pipes come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.
  Pitch pipes of this sort were most often used in the 18th and 19th centuries in churches which had no organ to give the opening note of a hymn. They are now quite rare, and hardly ever used for what they were intended, but may still be used as an alternative to a tuning fork. They are also useful for establishing what pitch standard was being used at a particular place and time.
caption: Variable Pitch pipe
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