E♭ Clarinet Tuner — Free Online Sopranino Clarinet Tuner

The E♭ is the clarinet that transposes upwards: written C sounds a minor third above, at concert E♭. It is also short enough that every barrel movement is large and every embouchure change is larger, and it sits high enough in the texture that ten cents sharp is heard by the whole band.

Tap “Start Tuning” and allow microphone access — audio is analyzed on your device and never leaves it. No microphone? You can still play reference tones for every note.

The clarinet that sounds higher than it reads

Every clarinet you are likely to have played before this one sounds below the page. The E♭ does the opposite: it sounds a minor third higher, so written C comes out as concert E♭5 at 622.25 Hz. It is a small fact with a large consequence, because the habit most clarinettists have — expecting the tuner to name something lower than they are reading — is exactly backwards here.

When the band tunes to concert B♭, your note is written G.

Try itE♭ clarinet — written note to concert pitch

Concert pitch in the tone, written note in the label. The highlighted row is your tuning note.

Short tube, large gestures

The barrel is the tuning adjustment, exactly as on a B♭ soprano — out is flat, in is sharp. What differs is scale. An E♭ clarinet is about two-thirds the length of a B♭, so any given millimetre of barrel is a much larger fraction of the instrument and moves the pitch correspondingly further.

Two practical consequences follow. Move in half-millimetres rather than millimetres. And accept that the instrument has less usable pulling range before the internal intervals start to stretch — an E♭ that needs a big gap to reach pitch wants a longer barrel, not a bigger gap.

The routine

Warm it, but expect it to be quick. A short instrument reaches playing temperature fast — and cools just as fast between numbers, which is the more useful half of that fact.
Play written G, mezzo-forte, jaw relaxed. Watch for concert B♭ on the dial. Take the reading from a held note, not the attack.
Adjust the barrel in half-millimetres. Sharp, pull; flat, push.
Check the twelfth. A clarinet overblows at the twelfth, so compare written E3 against written B4 — if the upper is sharp against the lower, the barrel length is wrong rather than its position.
Play a slow chromatic scale and watch without correcting. This is the step that matters most on an E♭: you sit above the whole band, so knowing which of your own notes run sharp is worth more than any single tuning-note reading.

Make the dial read your written note instead

Everything above names the concert pitch actually in the air, which is what a tuner is for and what the rest of the ensemble hears. But it is not what is printed on your part: a E♭ E♭ clarinet sounds a major sixth lower than it reads, so written C comes out as concert E♭.

This tuner can close that gap for you. The Transposition setting adds the interval back before the note is named, so the dial reports the note you are reading rather than the note you are sounding — the one thing a guitar tuner has no reason to do, and the reason to keep this page rather than the first tuner in the results.

Open this tuner set to E♭ → — or reach it yourself from the gear icon on the dial, under Transposition. The choice is remembered on this device and it travels in the link, so a section leader can send that URL to a stand full of E♭ clarinets and everyone arrives set the same way.

Switch it back to C — Concert pitch whenever you need to check yourself against the room, tune to a piano, or find out what a written note is actually sounding.

The rest of the family

Clarinet	Sounds	Written C5 sounds
E♭ sopranino (this page)	a minor 3rd higher	E♭5 · 622.25 Hz
B♭ soprano	a major 2nd lower	B♭4 · 466.16 Hz
A	a minor 3rd lower	A4 · 440.00 Hz
B♭ bass	a major 9th lower	B♭3 · 233.08 Hz

The piccolo is the closest analogue elsewhere in the band — the same problem of being small, high and impossible to hide.

Frequently asked questions

Which direction does an E♭ clarinet transpose?

Upwards — it is the only common clarinet that does. It sounds a minor third above what it reads, so written C comes out as concert E♭5 at 622.25 Hz. Every other clarinet in normal use sounds below the page, which is why the E♭ catches out players who have internalised "clarinets sound lower than they read".

What do I play when the band tunes to concert B♭?

Written G, in the middle of the staff. Sounding a minor third above written pitch, that G becomes concert B♭4 at 466.16 Hz. Note that this is the same written note an alto or baritone saxophone plays for the same call, for a completely unrelated reason — E♭ instruments happen to agree here.

Why is the E♭ so much harder to play in tune than my B♭?

The tube is roughly two-thirds the length, so every physical change is proportionally larger. A barrel movement that would be a fine correction on a B♭ is a coarse one here, and your embouchure has correspondingly more control over the pitch than you are used to. It is not a badly made instrument; it is a short one, and short instruments amplify the player.

My E♭ is sharp and pulling the barrel does not seem to help enough.

Check the embouchure first — biting on a small mouthpiece raises pitch dramatically and the E♭ punishes it more than any other clarinet. Play a written G with a deliberately loose jaw and plenty of air; if it drops a long way, the barrel is not your problem. Beyond that, E♭ clarinets genuinely have less pulling range than a B♭ before the intervals inside the instrument start to suffer, so a persistently sharp horn may need a longer barrel rather than more gap.

Does it matter that everyone can hear me?

Practically, yes, and it is worth saying because it changes how you should use a tuner. The E♭ sits above the whole ensemble, so its intonation is exposed in a way an inner voice is not — ten cents sharp is absorbed in a clarinet section and heard from the back of the hall on an E♭. That is the argument for checking your scale note by note rather than just setting the tuning note and stopping.