bloke posts too often about tuning. 😒

[bloke]

This afternoon, I played a rare (for me…ie. NOT a “service”) brass and organ recital. I looked through the tunes yesterday and saw that two or three of them were in A major and thought, “Oh good; I won’t have to lip up the C-sharps… and then laughed at myself, remembering that it was with organ.

“Droning” has become quite popular, but I only “drone“ to try to remind myself how badly out of tune equal temperament thirds, sixths, and sevenths sound - and just how they DO sound… (I don’t believe I need any practice with so-called mathematical “no-beats” intervals) … so I use one cheap tuner to supply the drone pitches, and another cheap tuner (which is set up to only hear my tuba) to show me when I’m dead on in tune, as far as equal temperament is concerned… It’s not pretty.

As I’ve stated quite a few times… Back in my guitar days, I started out as a little kid with a pitch pipe, then moved on to a tuning fork and harmonics, and then finally was able to hear an E without using a tuning fork, and tuned with harmonics and then went back and de-tuned the guitar so that it would sound equally good/bad in D-flat major as in A-major (because I wasn’t a rock ‘n’ roll player, but a jazz, standards, and bossa nova player - who played songs in all sorts of keys).

Probably half the time - as a tuba person - I work with keyboards, and half the time I work with symphony orchestras, so I’m dealing with both (a type of) equal temperament, and a type of perfect intervals tuning. When there is a piano concerto, I try as best I can to be conscientious about tuning with the left hand of the solo piano (ie. flat) - though (depending on the quality of the orchestra) sometimes, I am forced to go with the tidal wave of the ensemble tuning.

one last thing:
I used the huge B-flat on most of the tunes today – euphonium on one Gabrielli piece. i’ve spent quite a few hours with that instrument, but every once in a while my slide micro-tuning strategies get mixed up still to this day (as it is still new to me, I’m not quite automatic yet). I missed a few micro-tuning slide positions during the rehearsal, and (of course) I heard the not-sparkling tuning results, but observed this: An out-of-tune tuba doesn’t ruin things as much as an out-of-tune higher-pitched instrument. Rather than really ruining things, (simply - as long as the tuning flaw is not absolutely horrible) the sparkle is gone from the chords.

I guess that’s enough for now. I’ve probably bored everyone just about as much as I usually do with this sort of post.

[MikeMason]

Yes, you are diligent on that issue. I had a 3 hr rehearsal with a pick up orchestra for a church patriot service this morning (full brass/wind/percussion, maybe 10 total strings), choir,piano,organ. It’s simply a moving target.I know my horn’s basic tendencies,put the slides or alternate fingering where they need to be to get close, send the pitches where I think and hear they should go,adjust fast if My note doesn’t quite fit,especially on longer notes. This is different with my real orchestra or quintet on standard rep. Then I know where things need to go. Always room for improvement. Your many posts on the issue always remind me to try to do better and get closer. Appreciated.

[bloke]

well…
My job was easy:
The organ never changed, and the four other brass players are all more consistent than am I.
========
euphonium:
A different set of ears required, EVEN WHEN still playing the lowest part.
(If not “a different set of ears”, it’s still somehow different - playing in the trombone range. I tend to believe it’s because – unlike with the tuba – it’s not often that most of the OTHER instruments’ pitches being played occur within the harmonic series above the pitch we are playing on trombone/euphonium.)

[Mary Ann]

I'm subbing on the clarinet part in a woodwind quintet, playing violin (it's just a different clef, folks ---) and they are all newbies on their instruments having taken them up in the local New Horizons band; all smart people and doing quite well. They made a comment that perhaps they should hire me to coach them, and my thoughts on that were they would be quite surprised at the difference between my coaching and the coaching they were getting from the college student coach who graduated. The last time we met, the bassoon player had never even heard of tempered tuning and I had to do a short explanation of what it was; it came up when I was tuning the violin to perfect fifths and mentioned that. So if I coached them, they would learn to use beats to play in tune, which would train their ears as to what "in tune" sounds like when not bullied by a tempered tuning instrument in their midst. And they would get the concept of phrases instead of individual notes, and listening to each other to form proper ensemble, and --- they would get things they never heard of. It might be interesting but I won't ask for it.
Not my usual rant about intonation. It would be cool to have the opportunity to give people some of what a person learns in a lifetime about playing music. It can be music at any technical level, and it can also be noise at any technical level.

[bloke]

I'm subbing on the clarinet part in a woodwind quintet, playing violin (it's just a different clef, folks ---) and they are all newbies on their instruments having taken them up in the local New Horizons band; all smart people and doing quite well. They made a comment that perhaps they should hire me to coach them, and my thoughts on that were they would be quite surprised at the difference between my coaching and the coaching they were getting from the college student coach who graduated. The last time we met, the bassoon player had never even heard of tempered tuning and I had to do a short explanation of what it was; it came up when I was tuning the violin to perfect fifths and mentioned that. So if I coached them, they would learn to use beats to play in tune, which would train their ears as to what "in tune" sounds like when not bullied by a tempered tuning instrument in their midst. And they would get the concept of phrases instead of individual notes, and listening to each other to form proper ensemble, and --- they would get things they never heard of. It might be interesting but I won't ask for it.
Not my usual rant about intonation. It would be cool to have the opportunity to give people some of what a person learns in a lifetime about playing music. It can be music at any technical level, and it can also be noise at any technical level.

sidebar:
Of course, if guitars didn't have frets, I wouldn't have gone through chord progressions (in several keys) to temper the open string tuning AWAY FROM "perfect" tuning.


phrasing:
> It's disappointing to hear someone (who's not asking for any coaching, and who's someone who's too old/established/positioned/etc. to offer any coaching) who plays all of the pitches at the right times at the right volume levels - but without any actual music coming out of their instrument.
> It's also annoying when (even when playing - mostly - simple bass parts) I phrase my lines (to go with what SHOULD be the phrasing of the upper parts), yet those playing parts above mine (whose WOULD-BE phrasing I'm enforcing - WERE they playing musical phrases) are NOT phrasing their (all-to-obvious as to HOW to phrase them) musical lines.
> It's REALLY fun, when everyone automatically does what's (nearly always: obviously) implied in the musical lines.

gigs: (where people playing mechanically are on-board, or where awful music is programmed)
"A bad gig is better than a good job."
- Ken Spain, Memphis trombonist

[Ricardo]

I appreciate the emphasis! As an amateur I think there is a huge gap between intonation skills of the amateurs vs the pros and teachers don’t do a very good job of teaching intonation. They just expect students to some how figure it out themselves. But maybe that’s changed since I was a kid.

Drones were a revelation for me (first using them in my 40’s - old dog can be taught new tricks) completely changed the way I played in band - I was suddenly diverting a major part of my focus to playing in tune with the dominant sound in the music. All of a sudden I could tell if a note was sharp or flat, whereas prior to using the drone I just knew it didn’t sound ‘right.’ But didn’t know what to do to get it in tune.

I think intonation, with say a drone app, is now one of the easiest things to teach. But do current day teachers use them? Or just expect students to ‘get it’ themselves without guidance?

[bloke]

I do see the importance of drones to learn perfect interval sounds, but I just spent so much time tuning guitars for so many years (having to touch up their tuning after each piece, and also “shading” their tuning - particularly for “flat keys”) that the only thing I really needed to learn - when I was first hired to play tuba with professional musicians - was when to play slightly flat (and by how much) and when to play precisely in tune with the other (tunable instruments) musicians… (mostly, again: when there is and when there isn’t a keyboard instrument involved).
… of course, I’m still-to-this-day having to work to control those things at extreme volume levels, as tuba intonation tends to go haywire - when playing extremely soft and extremely loud.

tuba lessons and intonation:
As I suggested in an earlier post in this thread, my observation is that poor tuba intonation does obviously harm the corporate sound but not as much harm occurs as with soprano instruments being out of tune. Also, I would wonder about the percentage of teachers of the tuba who have really mastered tuning. I certainly haven’t mastered it, and work on it every day. Not meaning to put down tuba teachers, they also often have a lot of remedial work to do with many of their students’ basic technique, and time is limited in lessons.

[MikeMason]

I try to have them at least make an intonation chart, to uncover the big problems. I do that for myself too and am often surprised by how things change over time.

[bloke]

I try to have them at least make an intonation chart, to uncover the big problems. I do that for myself too and am often surprised by how things change over time.

Tubas are weird-ass things.

I'm not a warmer-up-ist...
(I was 45 year ago...and then, I decided that I deserved to have a life - so I learned to play well "cold" - and just deal with the instrument ACTUALLY warming up.)

...so I have to know what each of my instruments' tuning quirks are cold and warm (mostly cold, UNLESS it's a jazz gig, where I'm CONSTANTLY playing bass lines or silly tuba solos). Some of those quirks disappear when a particular instrument is warm, and some of those quirks emerge when a particular instrument is warm. Other quirks (much easier to remember and work with) simply move arithmetically.

the sparkly sousaphone:
I only know that second-space c is flat. and that (though it's an oddball 4-valve instrument) 123 is ugly-sharp.
Hell...When I'm using that, a/the gig is mostly "noise".

[iiipopes]

You can have the best technique, "world class tone," (inside joke) and otherwise be the best tuba player out there. But if you are not in tune, none of it matters. You will still sound bad, and it will gravely (pun intended) detract from the ensemble. If your tone is off, you can still provide foundation. If your technique is off, you can still figure out a way to play most of the notes on the proper beat and lay off the other notes for others to play. But lowest voice deficient tuning will destroy the foundation to an ensemble. YMMV.

the sparkly sousaphone:
I only know that second-space c is flat.

Do what I have done: chop the tail of the 1st valve circuit about the diameter of the tubing to get 2nd space C in tune. Then convert the upper loop of the circuit into a moveable valve slide so that it stays pulled about that same amount for 1st valve notes otherwise, and then (on a 3-valve horn) be pulled to get low C & F 1+3 in tune. Of course, you may not need that on your 4-valve, because you can, as you know, play both C's 4th valve alone.

Yeah, I'm preaching to the choir. I'm just reminding myself since I have my first outdoor gig of the season on Sunday July 3rd, 3-valve souzy, and I'm getting the 3-valve mental approach back in shape.

[iiipopes]

Oops. Double post.