Tuning

By Joel Shifflet

An instructor I once studied with told me that though someone may be able to play the world’s most challenging music, if they can’t make it sound good, no one is going to want to listen to it. Tuning and intonation is one of the most natural and difficult concepts to learn for many people. It has been my experience that many young players struggle with locking into the pitch when playing music. In this lesson I would like to address the original tuning process for individual or ensemble use with out the use of a tuner. Here I want to discuss six points to help you or your ensemble lock in the pitch.

1) First we must listen carefully to the pitch we are given to tune too. Many times when you hear a young ensemble tune, students don’t take the time to internalize the pitch. After the pitch is given it seems like it’s a race to see who can tune the fastest. To truly internalize the pitch we should just sit and listen for a little bit. Let the note sink into your mind and resonate.

2) Sing the pitch before playing it. There is no better way to internalize the pitch then to sing it and feel the pitch resonate through out your body. If you can accurately sing the pitch then you know you are on the right track. (If you have trouble with this step you should practice playing random pitches on the piano and then singing the pitch out loud).

3) Alter the pitch as you sing. Sometimes students can tell that they are out of tune, but they simply don’t know if they are sharp or flat. Just as it is important to know where the right pitch is, it is also important to know where the right pitch isn’t. To understand this better try the following. Sing the given tuning note as best you can, then gradually raise the pitch about a half step, lower it back to the original pitch, lower it again to hear a half step below the original pitch, then raise it back to the original pitch again like this.

If you can do this successfully then you will know exactly where that pitch is.

4) Play the note on your instrument. By now we should have a good feeling of where the right pitch is as well as where the right pitch isn’t. After doing the previous three exercises it will be much easier to hear if you are in tune as well as if your pitch is sharp or flat.

5) Tune the note in the same way you will perform it. This holds especially true for wind students. When you tune, you need to have air support! You cannot expect to tune your instrument with bad air support and then play in tune with your ensemble. Good air support will greatly affect the pitch of your instrument. Since we should be playing music with good air support anyway, we should also be tuning with good air support.

6) You don’t have to tune using only the note given. You can use intervals to help you to lock in the pitch. Remember that every note you can play has some relationship to the note that is given. So if the given note is a concert A, and I play a concert E below on my instrument, then I will have a perfect fourth. An excellent way to lock in the pitch as well as over all intonation is to play the notes of the scale of the given pitch against the given pitch moving up or down, like this.