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Tuning is power. Out of tune is musical impotence.

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Really good intonation is like taking a thin piece of gauze off a painting. Suddenly the colors are more vibrant , there is more depth, and the visceral impact is increased. What makes it tough is that, as Bloke’s video shows, there is a big difference between pretty good intonation and really good intonation.

Here are two different recordings of the same piece. The UGA choir version is pretty good. The Gregg Smith Singers version packs a wallop. You can hear the difference from the very first chord, where 16 singers have way more impact than 45. Yes, there are differences in recording technique and interpretation, but I think the biggest difference is the level of precision in tuning.

Anyway, I tried to pick a good enough piece that you won’t feel I’ve wasted five minutes of your life, even if you don’t agree with me. I have also heard the Gregg Smith Singers live on several occasions and can assure you that no recording tricks were required to make them sound that good.

another example of the magic of intonation...
as well as (sadly) the long-lost magic of Disney.





I don't "lecture"...but ENCOURAGE...because - when magic occurs in music - there's no drug that offers an equivalent "high".

If all the mechanics are there...imperceptibly close to perfectly syncronized
- time
- tuning
- phrasing (from whence comes the icing-on-the-cake top layer of additional EMOTION and HUMANITY)
- the technical prowess to put it all together
- equipment that functions so well that it does a very large percentage of the heavy lifting FOR the performer...

...THAT's when music performance can become "other-worldly" (for both a performer and a patron).

"Paint-by-number" music (with a bit of accidentally crossing the lines, but without any artistic blending the lines) is far better than nothing (particularly if the paint-by-number musician is hearing things - in their mind - as they actually should be), but its not (a word I've used recently) musical nirvana, by any means.

(Regardless of level of remuneration) hours spent towards attempting to achieve musical nirvana are always worth it, and money spent on instruments (so good that the player isn't aware they're there) is the best money any hobbyist or professional can possibly spend.

After a while, we're all gone, any money that we "saved" (by then, and via intentional engineering) is about worthless, OR is squandered by offspring and government (often in some of the worst imaginable ways).

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I've never heard better on the field.

I'd note that these ensembles are free of viola players.....

' pretty good viola players around here...some pretty amazing bass players as well.

I agree, intonation is key.

bloke wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2024 7:34 am ' pretty good viola players around here...some pretty amazing bass players as well.

Viola is like euphonium in ways beyond the jokes. Played timidly, they are both “meh”. Played assertively, they can sing.

djwpe wrote: ↑Sun Mar 17, 2024 6:45 pm

bloke wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2024 7:34 am ' pretty good viola players around here...some pretty amazing bass players as well.

Viola is like euphonium in ways beyond the jokes. Played timidly, they are both “meh”. Played assertively, they can sing.

Can’t help myself sometimes. I got to see William Primrose live once and it was truly unforgettable.

.

I think I'll make a snarky comment here relating intonation to embouchure:

With embouchure, some people seem to think that for your embouchure to work, "just play the sound you hear in your head" and that's all there is to it.

With intonation, I'm one of those who says "just use your ears and you'll get it right."

Both approaches have the same flaw in that they make assumptions that something so incredibly obvious does not need to be taught to anyone.

Maybe I can make a point to someone.

The first time you play with a professional orchestra it ruins your enjoyment of anything inferior permanently .

I can’t stand playing in a group that doesn’t play in tune, it means I can’t sound good no matter what I do.

One of my best friends is an oboe player with perfect pitch. The kind of perfect pitch where he can tell you if it’s 440 or 441. I learned a lot from him about intonation!

(re: two posts back)...

...fine, but 99% of teaching is self-teaching, and it isn't one-and-done teaching like some "Here's a way to do a 98% perfect wheel alignment on your car" teaching; "Just follow these instructions":

...It's YEARS of refinement (via sharpening individual practice and performance techniques), CONTINUED years (lasts forever) of reinforcement, and spending a SIGNIFICANT portion of EACH practice session ONLY on tuning (at all sorts of volume levels/situations) and then SIMULTANEOUSLY working on fill-in-the-blank PLUS TUNING during the rest of EVERY practice session.

ALMOST NEVER have I had a teacher (and I've engaged some highfalutin-and-good ones) that worked on "tuning" with me.
I tend to suspect that many others (who've paid for lessons) will claim the same (and I hope there are many exceptions, THOUGH (again: with the "alignment" analogy) it's damned hard to "teach".
Again, it's overwhelmingly up to the individual...

...and there are so many types of tuning to learn.
Just to name a few (and SKIPPING OVER subsets of the first identified type of tuning...(and no, I'm NOT calling them by their formal labels, for those unfamiliar with the formal labels)...

- There's (for the lack of a better name) "perfect" tuning" (whereby chords are ACOUSTICALLY tuned to "ring" perfectly. (I would rate this as the easiest, even through every damn pitch is played at several places, "depending".)

- There's "equal temperament" (for when working with prominent fretted instruments - such as a bass guitar and a 6-string guitar)...Equal temperament is just about the ugliest-sounding tuning, as it flies in the face of the physics of the universe.

- There's "piano tuning" (for when working with a prominent electronic keyboard or accompanying a piano concerto) whereby it's a combination of equal temperament PLUS the LOWER the pitch (below A above middle C) the slightly flatter one should play (on the tuba)...the same goes for soprano-voiced instruments playing sharper-and-sharper ABOVE A above middle C...but we don't do that so much...unless the composer/arranger of one of our ensemble parts is an idiot...or we are playing some wild tuba solo with piano accompaniment (ie. "playing for no remuneration, with thirteen people in attendance").

I have a bass trombone friend who plays in a very prominent brass quintet...I started up a conversation with him about this sort of thing once, he shrugged his shoulders, and said, "or just play in tune". I really relate to him, because (having confided in me) he revealed to me that he wasn't a very good trombonist in his school band, never tried out for any thing like "region/state" stuff, and only began really working on playing the trombone around "the age of majority"...which lines up with my story really closely (as all of my concentration - up until that age - was "spending absurd numbers of hours each night working on guitar etudes, and reinforcing/expanding my solo guitar repertoire".

re: "perfect pitch"...
I really don't know what that is, but - when playing guitar constantly, I could easily pull up my 1st string to E "on the nose" without a tuning fork (pre portable electronic tuners, etc.), because I "learned" E.
...but bloke, you can't "learn" that...You have to be "born" with it.
ok...fine...whatever...

bloke "...and - as soon as one becomes just a bit cocky re: their tuning skills - there's a glance over to the tuner, seeing the needle showing something c. 20c higher than it should be. "

I never had to be taught intonation because it was always obvious to me, because when there are beats it bothers me.

But I have literally enlightened some students by showing them what beats sound like (via making them come and go with guitar harmonics and turning the tuning machine,) so that they can use their ears differently than they have been. In every case, they were trying to nail the pitch as if they had perfect pitch and had no idea how to tune with others any other way.

I wish I could find the demo of the college horn performance majors whose intonation was fixed permanently in 30 minutes by Steve Colley. They simply did not know what to listen FOR and had to be told. I have sat next to retired band directors whose intonation was off far enough to rattle the chandeliers -- because they got all the way through college without ever being taught to listen for beats. And you cannot find a pitch center in groups where people do not have this concept. Somehow MOST (but not all) pros learn this, and I suspect many do not know "how" they know whether they are in tune, except that it just doesn't sound right if it has beats in it.

I don't personally think perfect pitch is useful for anything except pulling a starting pitch "out of the air." Useful for singers, horn players, and other brass players who would otherwise have some trouble figuring out whether they were on the right partial. Barry Tuckwell once said that he did not see how anyone could play the horn without perfect pitch.

All types of tuning that I listed - beyond the first type - involve dealing with "beats".
With all those other types, attempting to eliminate "beats" results in (well...) "beats".

tuba, in particular:
Being the predominant bass (capable of equaling the output of loud organ's or bass guitar's bass-voiced pitch), it's the player's of this instrument responsibility to (regardless of which tuning system is appropriate) put THEIR pitches where they belong, in order to avoid misguiding all the other players.

When (admittedly, on purpose - as both a musical troll and as an experiment) - a friend of mine and I (screwing around in college "symphonic band" warm-ups - a book called "T.I.P.P.S. For Band") realized that we (playing in perfect unison with each other - COMPLETELY at the wrong frequencies) could pull and tug the entire band this way and that - pitch-wise, whereby - when it got up to the clarinets and flutes entering - we had placed our pitch so impossibly high or low for them that the band director would cut off the band, scold the high woodwinds, and tell them to "LISTEN TO THE TUBAS !!!"

TANGENT:

Another experiment we (the two of us playing the tuba) did was at the end of Morton Gould's "American Salute" (same band / same director).

He kept asking for the last six notes to be "more intense".

Finally, I (not my standmate...just me) removed my main tuning slide, depressed all my valve levers (longest possible column of air)...and (as loud/intensely as I could) just BLASTED out a random/higher pitch (out the mouthpipe tube - past the valves...mostly, intense "white noise"...

...to which (with that added to the corporate band resonance) the director said, "THAT'S IT !"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... e=emb_logo

I would also add that good tuning is also about sound colour and balance within a chord.

Re: bloke. Everyone can learn a pitch to some extent, but true perfect pitch if a form of synesthesia. To them pitch is as obvious as recognising the colour blue. Definitely not necessary for being able to play in tune but it’s useful.

If you really listen to a piano they’re actually atrociously out of tune. I’ve heard a piano digitally altered to have just intonation and it doesn’t even sound like a piano anymore. Every chord rings and blends.

yet, I learned a pitch (E) to complete (rather than to "some") extent.
I suspect that (had I worked on tuning to the five other open string guitar pitches) I could have (at least) learned those as well.

tempering...
After the height of my playing (after tuning the six strings - so-called - "perfectly"), I would go all through the "circle of fifths" (chord progressions) and temper the strings to offer the "least offensive" ("well-tempered"...??) open string tuning for all keys...but - later - got into tuning the open strings for playing pieces/songs/whatever that were in particular keys.

I've also heard "perfect pitch" people play badly out-of-tune, so (whatever it "is" - that people claim to know what it "is") knowing and executing are obviously two different things.

summary:
I don't believe that "perfect pitch" is something mysterious/"you - over there - can't possibly understand it, so don't claim to have experienced it" type of thing. There may be a proclivity/quick-study/immediate-study thing, but I sincerely believe (since I learned one pitch...) that - had I put (yes) my mind to it (via epic repetition), I could have learned the others.

other pitches:
When I put my face up to any of my tubas (apparently "tactile triggering pitch memory") I immediately know where the pitches are located.
I can do this with C/B-flat/F/E-flat...I haven't spend enough XXXX's of hours for that to happen with euphonium.
The pitch, E: I'm not sure that I can find it - come to think of it - without a guitar in my lap.
I probably have the same chance of missing a really high pitch as the next person, but - when my mouth is on the mouthpiece - I know the sound of any pitch...YET (just as with the "perfect pitch" people who play out-of-tune) I catch myself playing out-of-tune as well.

...My Mom was a remarkable visual artist (studied at the University of Iowa with Grant Wood, and got a job immediately after she left college (without completing her degree) as a commercial artist...I'm sure she could draw perfectly straight lines, perfect circles (etc.), but probably not whilst doing something else at the same time...(analogy: identifying pitches on-the-nose and playing an instrument at the same time)

bloke "I'm not really interested as to whether my brain deals with learning in the same way others brains do, and nor whether others claim that I know or do not know what I know - in the way that I know it."

I shared with @bloke a video of recent Easter rehearsal in which I used the Packer Eb. (I’m still not the finest sight reader of bass clef on Eb). After going back and listening to it, I should probably issue a public apology to Joe, as the intonation was not up to my standards (no fault of the instrument).

Doc (not trying to offend the intonation-only guy)