Author: Oboe Craig
Date: 2011-01-07 18:14
Age old problem, everyone is a pitch critic.
Stone age - pitch fork; dark age - tuning bar on resonator; age of enlightenment - digital tuners.
I skip the quartz things, they did tend to drift.
The nice thing about the abundance of cheap, accurate digital tuners these days....just look around, they are on many stands in a band or orchestra.
Watch closely and you will see many eyes divert to the closest tuner to check what the oboist is playing. So, be sure be be right on.
But that is just the tuning note... then the real fun begins.
Cold players going sharper and sharper, loud clarinets going flat, psycho-acoustical phenomenon. (Wiki that for some really scary reading...)
For this discussion I'd like to start with how much tuners help reed making and later get into effective practice habits with tuners.
I really like my current digital tuner. I can set it to various A=values, and I personally do stick with 440.
The first thing I love about it is it helps me avoid any biting while testing the crow pitch, and it keeps me honest about that even if the reed is blowing at what would be an A - 336 -339, where so little extra pressure is needed to crow up to pitch it can go unnoticed.
Avoiding that early on precludes some pitch scalability problems across the range of the instrument. And I believe it is important to achieving the effortless slur from high A to 3rd octave D I think so important. Even a little biting pressure can skew that for me as the reed settles in.
After that, once a reed's pitch stability is proven (see videos under reed length posts), I expect the reed to play easily in equal temperament tuning, before I try for the flexibility needed for alternate tuning methods.
Our instruments are fully chromatic, and are made for equal temperament, and hopefully with sufficient flexibility that other tunings can happen with minimal fuss or convolution requiring no excessive embouchure contortions.
One big benefit of the tuners for me is seeing graphically the needle begin to raise or lower before I even realize it. I think of it as bio-feedback and a good way to establish muscle memory related to breath support and embouchure control. That becomes a habit, a base-line and slight variations then control the desired changes while resisting the un-wanted ones.
Consistency is one reward.
Once equal temperament is under control, and I mean no sagging or high pitches across the oboe, then the tuner is useful to see how much variation in control the player needs if a just or pure tuning for a major 3rd, leading tone, minor 3rd, major 2, or Perfect 5th is needed. They go in opposing directions, some up some down, and by varying amounts of cents.
Once you know how many cents difference flat or sharp relative to equal temperament a given interval requires, I like to see the needle move that much to reenforce the ear in practice. Not staring blindly at the thing, just play then look to verify.
If you play to a fairly loud tone from the tuner, you can tune by ear until a 'beat-less' interval happens. Then you may notice a difference tone way down low and learn how that 'subjective tone' (another Wiki read) can be used to tune as you go.
Flute players find this easier because sine waves being less complex than oboe tones make it easier to hear the difference tones, but two oboes together can still produce useful DTs and it opens up new worlds for many re: tuning.
And this is also a potential useful outcome of effectively using tuners as an aid.
Its just a tool, and we need all the help we can get.
Post Edited (2011-01-07 18:39)
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