Author: Ursa
Date: 2019-05-16 19:31
Please note that I said using tuner apps CAN be a good practice. I didn't say that it is ALWAYS a good practice.
I don't use tuning aids when playing the clarinet. It's almost immediately apparent to my trained ears whether I am in tune with myself, and with the rest of the ensemble. I am always adjusting tuning on-the-fly, as we all should.
But I also play the tuba. The clarinet axiom that what we hear on stage isn't necessarily what the audience is hearing goes doubly true for the tuba.
With an upward-firing bell that has an exit point above the performer's head, the tubist hears reflected sound and has to base his voicing and tuning decisions based on this reflected sound. The audience, conversely, mostly hears the nondirectional fundamental tone, sans most of the overtones that the tubist is hearing and reacting to.
The overtone series of all instruments by nature consists of certain pitches that are perceived as sharp or flat versus the fundamental. Room acoustics can cause a sufficient proportion of these out-of-tune overtones to be reflected back at the tubist versus the fundamental pitch to cause a perception that the tuba is out-of-tune when the audience would hear in-tune pitches, and vice versa.
I have been stymied by this phenomena more than once, and periodically check a tuner to ensure that it isn't happening.
We also have a conductor in one of my ensembles who has some odd notions about brasswind mute usage, sometimes insisting that the entire trumpet and/or trombone section uses the supposedly-identical mutes provided by the ensemble. Problem is, without carefully adjusting the insertion depth via sanding down or adding bumper cork material, the muted instrument will either be flat, sharp, in-tune, sharp on low tones and flat on high tones, or flat on low tones and sharp up high. Furthermore, the performer isn't hearing the full overtone spectrum produced by their instrument when "uncorked", and, as with my tuba example, may be reacting to a higher proportion of out-of-tune overtones than they would hear from their instrument when played open. Once again, the use of an electronic tuner can be a big help in diagnosing and addressing tuning issues when using mutes.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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