An oboe’s tuning problem, in F
An english horn — cor anglais — is an alto oboe pitched in F. It sounds a perfect fifth below what it reads, so written C comes out as concert F4 at 349.23 Hz, and when the orchestra tunes to concert A your note is written E.
Everything that makes an oboe hard to tune is still true here — there is no barrel, no slide, and no joint you can pull, so the pitch of the instrument is a property of the reed rather than of the tube. What is added is the transposition, and one extra variable an oboe does not have: the bocal.
Concert pitch in the tone, the written note that produces it in the label. The highlighted row is the orchestral tuning A.
The bocal is the adjustment an oboe does not have
The reed sits on a curved metal tube called the bocal rather than on a cork staple pushed into the body. Bocals come in numbered lengths, and the number is a real mechanical control over the pitch of the whole instrument: a longer bocal flattens it, a shorter one sharpens it.
That matters because reed-making is variable and bocal length is not. A player whose reeds consistently come out sharp has two choices — fight every reed, or move to a longer bocal and let the reeds be what they are. Most experienced players own more than one bocal for exactly this reason, and choosing between them is the closest thing an english horn has to pulling a barrel.
The routine
- Soak the reed properly and warm the instrument. A dry reed plays sharp and unstable, and a cold instrument plays flat — both will move under you within a few minutes, so neither is worth measuring.
- Play written E, mezzo-forte, and look for concert A. Hold it steady; take the reading from the middle of the note rather than the attack.
- Sharp: pull the reed out a millimetre. Flat: push it in. The range is small — a millimetre or two either way — and past that you are opening a leak rather than tuning.
- If the reed is at its limit, change the bocal, not the embouchure. This is the decision point. A reed that needs to be pulled a long way out to reach pitch is telling you the bocal is too short.
- Check the octaves and the low register. Written B3 and the notes just above it are where a reed that is too hard or a leak in the lower joint shows up first — flat, stuffy, and unresponsive to embouchure.
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 F english horn sounds a perfect fifth lower than it reads, so written C comes out as concert F.
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 F → — 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 english horns 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 double-reed family
| Instrument | Key | Written C sounds | Pitch adjustment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oboe | C | at concert pitch | reed only |
| English horn (this page) | F | a perfect 5th lower | reed + bocal length |
| Bassoon | C | at concert pitch | reed + bocal (never pull it) |
| Contrabassoon | C | an octave lower | reed + a real tuning slide |
Note the trap in that table: a bassoon’s bocal must not be pulled, and an english horn’s length is a legitimate choice. They are not the same adjustment despite sharing a name — see the bassoon page for why.