A pitchpipe is a small device which may be described as a musical instrument, although it is not actually used to play music as such. A musical instrument is a device that has been constructed or modified with the purpose of making music. ... Music is an art, entertainment, or other human activity which involves organized sound, though definitions may vary. ...

The earliest pitchpipes 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. This article is about the musical instrument, not about devices for recording sound, visual, and other information; for the latter, see tape recorder, video cassette recorder, flight data recorder (black box), camcorder, recorder (part-time judge). ... A slide whistle (variously known as a swanee whistle, piston flute or less commonly jazz flute) is a wind instrument consisting of a fipple like a recorders and a tube with a piston in it. ... The chromatic scale is a musical scale that contains all twelve pitches of the Western tempered scale. ... In Music theory, the diatonic major scale (also known as the Guido scale), from the Greek diatonikos or to stretch out, is a fundamental building block of the European-influenced musical tradition. ...

Pitchpipes 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. This article or section should be merged with Pipe organ The Casavant pipe organ at Notre-Dame de Montréal Basilica, Montreal The organ is a type of keyboard musical instrument, distinctive because the sound is not produced by a percussion action, as on a piano or celesta, or by... A tuning fork is a simple metal two-pronged fork with the tines formed from a U-shaped bar of elastic material (usually steel). ... In music, pitch is the perception of the frequency of a note. ...

Another kind of pitchpipe is a tuned-reed instrument which can produce only a few notes. These are used for tuning instruments; for instance, one used for tuning guitars produces the notes E' A' D G B e. These are also used to "give the note" to a cappella singers. The classical guitar typically has 3 nylon and 3 nickel-wound strings. ... A cappella music is vocal music or singing without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. ...

External Links

• ZWorkbench (http://www.zworkbench.com/products.html) has a pitch pipe that works on a mobile phone. They also have a metronome and guitar chord reference for mobile phones.