Secrets from the stage - humidity!

At our last candlelit concert June 8th 2025 it was a particularly hot and humid day with the mercury rising up steadily throughout the day. We'd arranged a piece of music for three classical guitars, two of which had been tuned perfectly with the piano and left on stage. The third guitar was with Peter (guitarist and double bass player) who was warming up his fingers on the instrument in the cool of the 'green room' ...also perfectly tuned with the piano earlier.

As we all walked on stage it was like stepping into a tropical climate, the intimate and close setting was full of people and the humidy was palpable as the warm air from outside had filled the theatre. Peter placed the guitar in its stand and opened the show playing double bass. 15 minutes later and playing a quick arpeggio, the guitar was obviously so out of tune (like it had just been restrung a couple moments earlier). It was the rapid change in humidity.

Micro-expansion

The guitar was just doing its thing, absorbing moisture from the unvarnished inside of the instrument and micro-expanding causing everything to be in state of change. It continued to do so for the next thirty minutes or so. Apart from tuning and jumping into each number, theres not much you can do except constantly listen to things slipping in real time, figure out what string has become a little sharp or flat, and make a quick adjustment between the notes to retune (if you can). Pressing harder to bend a note up or down works on single notes but its hard to do much when you have chords and arpeggios to play. Monika's razor sharp ears kept her violin in perfectly tune throughout the concert but we kept checking tuning between pieces (especially with the fretted guitar, where you can't make delicate adjustments of finger position to correct anything like you can on say double bass or violin).

"On the move"

All wooden instruments including violins , double basses, cellos etc change shape and indeed their tone alters as the humidity changes and moisture content of the wood changes ...sometimes you just have to go with the flow! Theres a lot of open grain inside our instruments and so we have to consider the effect of damp warm moist air, or making abrupt changes in climate between having an instrument inside and then taking them outside out - the instrument is like a barometer responding to it's climate and constantly on the move if you expose them to changes. For the most part we love a consistent humidity ...and so do our instruments!

Caution "slippery when wet!"

The warm moisture laden air in the concert that day also rather quickly made the strings and fingerboards of the violin, guitar and double bass pretty slippery! A quick wipe down helps every once in a while!

As with all things in live music you take stock and figure out what you could do differently. We hadn't predicted such a difference in moisture between back stage and on stage (it had been pretty even between rehearsal and concert ...till our wonderful audience arrived in this small and tightly packed venue!) ...and so next time, we will perhaps get a separate guitar for warm ups in the green room and leave that third guitar on stage and continue to manage things during the performance - theres an added sense of 'in-the-moment' teamwork navigating these things - worth a high five when you get to the end! Thats live music for you!