I was with a music group on Tuesday trying to learn a new song, when we needed an online pitch pipe badly, because no one happened to have a chromatic pitch pipe along. That steel cookie just doesn’t always make it into our pockets along side the requisite wallet, mobile phone and keys. So we stumbled along and made do without it for the duration of our song learning efforts.

Later, I got to thinking about how if we could just use our cell phone’s ability to play audio and use a pre-recorded set of auditory pitches, we wouldn’t ever have that problem again, since most people always have their cell phone with them. So I went hunting online to find something of that nature that would work for our future music endeavors. I came across the Online Pitch Pipe and figured the MP3′s found on that page would be just the ticket.  Unfortunately, they are no longer available, but thanks to our friends over at the Internet Archive and their Wayback Machine, I was able to download the files from the 2005 version of the website.  I have linked to them below in a zipped folder which you may freely download and unzip before loading them on your cellphone.  Now before anyone argues that the sound from a genuine free reed aerophone is far superior than the sound of an electronic micro-sized speaker on a cellphone, I will quickly agree.  However, having your cellphone blow the pitch is better than no pitch at all    So, I wouldn’t recommend this as an alternative for any of us Mennonite, Beachy or other Acappella singer-types on Sunday morning at church, but it works for impromptu singing events when the Real McCoy isn’t available.

By the way, if you’re looking for a genuine chromatic reed instrument, Amazon carries an excellent one. Without further ado, here is a link to get a Kratt Chromatic Pitch Pipe.  They sell them in any key you might need.

Enjoy!

Cellphone Pitch Pipe.zip

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