Pitch pipe

This wooden pitch pipe is an early example of this type of instrumet, used to provide a pitch reference. Early pitch pipes like this one were mostly used in the 18th and 19th centuries in churches which had no organ to give the opening note for a hymn. This pitch pipe is made of walnut and it consists in two pieces, a pipe and a plunger. Plungers in pitch pipes like this one used to be marked with the notes from either the chromatic scale or the diatonic scale. By setting it into the right position, the indicated note would have been produced by blowing in the pipe's mouthpiece. However this example does not have the notes marked. Part of the pipe is also coated with old string.