 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Dan Shusta
Date: 2010-02-04 18:21
A short while ago, I began wondering how important intonation was as to the solo player. I pulled out my new Korg, CA-30 tuner and began to do some listening to slow, clarinet solos.
I started out with Stranger on the Shore. As I listened to Acker Bilk, I noticed my meter stopping at various points from -30 to +30, and yet I could not detect him being "off pitch" and continued to enjoy the song.
Using the same song, I then listented to Kenny G. Even though most of his notes were much closer to zero, there were some long tones that were +20 and yet, again, I couldn't tell that he was "high" in pitch.
I then listened to Julian Bliss, starting at age 4 playing "Stranger on the Shore" and then, again, listened to him playing a recent Mozart recording with a symphony in the background. To sum it up, many notes were close to zero, however, even in the Mozart recording, there were some long, sustained notes that were +20 to +25 cents high.
I even listened to Patti Page singing a slow number. Again, some long tones were quite off pitch per my meter, however, I really couldn't hear anything amiss and enjoyed listening to her sing.
So... just how important is intonation? Can any in the audience really tell if a player is -30 low or +30 high?
Perhaps my question should be: Under what circumstances is intonation very important?
p.s. After my little, highly unscientific experiment this afternoon, as long as a tone or note "sounds" correct, to me, it doesn't really matter what the meter reads.
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Author: Paul Miller
Date: 2010-02-04 18:37
There are several different tuning systems out there. Pythagorean (aka Just) intonation has to do with the ratios of vibration between different pitches. So, an octave would be 1:2, a fifth would be 2:3, etc etc. Generally this type of tuning system works very well and sounds incredibly resonant... as long as you're not changing keys or playing heavily chromatic music.
After several compromise systems, some smart guy came up with the idea of "equal temperament" which is a logarithmic division of the octave. The distance between each note is 100 cents, and while the specific value of each cent changes as you go higher or lower in the scale, the idea is that for hearing purposes, each note is equally distant from the other. This means that every single note is equally out of tune. We're used to hearing things this way, but it does mean that certain colors are lost - the previously widespread tuning system was called "well temperament" (hence, the Well Tempered Clavier) and each key sounded distinct from all the others.
In the real world, wind and string players constantly switch between equal temperament and just intonation. If we're holding a pitch, we might have to raise or lower the pitch to really get it to resonate well. If we're moving between key areas we might just let the pitch ride close to the center of the tuner in order to facilitate the key changes without going too far out of tune.
Ultimately, intonation is a very subjective thing. Different people hear different things in different ways - for one person, a melody might be beautifully in tune with itself, but for another person, it might be completely out of whack with the underlying harmonies.
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2010-02-04 18:42
The ear plays tricks on you. Unless a person has perfect pitch everything in solo playing becomes relative. Some listeners will be more sensitive to pitch variances then others. I think if the pitch clashes with another player in unisons or octaves it will become much more obvious than above a chord in the back round. When playing in an orchestra, we are much more conscience of intonation with the other players and are always trying to get it as perfect as possible. One of our former players use to say that intonation is a musicians disease. I guess it bothers some more than others. ESP http://eddiesclarinet.com
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Author: Caroline Smale
Date: 2010-02-04 18:48
I think it's largely a matter of context.
Very few if any people could hear a pitch deviation of say 3 cents, and when playing a solo line probably 15 cents is not noticeable.
What pitch is F#?, Gb? in every different key signature?
However in a unison even 3 cents would stick out.
In a harmonic context it really is a matter of does it SOUND in tune, not what a meter reads.
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Author: cearnsh
Date: 2010-02-05 11:48
Equal temperament is a tuning scale that allows instruments with fixed tuning to play in any key but at the expense of some blurring of harmonic purity. Electronic tuners like the CA-30 work in equal temperament.
It's probably true that most people can't hear a variation of 15 cents or so in an isolated melodic line but in a harmonic context it can be very significant.
If you look at the tuning scale on the CA-30 you'll see two small pointers near +/- 15 cents. These show the pitches for 'correct' tuning of a major and minor third above a reference note, relative to the equal-tempered scale of the tuner. So if you're playing the third in a triad and the tuner shows you're on 0 cents, you're out of tune!
It really can make a significant improvement to the harmonic clarity if these tuning adjustments are made.
Chris
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Author: Nessie1
Date: 2010-02-05 12:13
Let's not forget that good string players will still play nearer to "real" intonation e.g their G flat will be slightly sharper than F sharp. For wind players playing with strings, say a clarinettist playing the Mozart quintet, this may mean that they actually need to vary intonation in the same way. When playing with piano, on the other hand, you are trying to keep in tune with equal temperament which places different demands on one, always assuming that the piano is well in tune in the first place!
Going back to the original exercise with the tuner, wouldn't some of the variation be due to vibrato or lack of it?
Vanessa.
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Author: Dan Shusta
Date: 2010-02-05 15:03
Nessiel,
My CA-30 seemed to not respond to the fast variations in a vibrato. And yes, when Julian Bliss was playing Mozart, he had a "VERY" large string section in the symphony background.
I purposely choose slow songs where one note was dominant to, hopefully, check the pitch of the note. I was quite surprised that variations from -40 to +30 didn't seem to have any effect as to how the song seemed to be "in tune" as far as my ears were concerned.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2010-02-05 15:41
I have relative pitch, not absolute pitch. I'll accept nearly anything as concert A, but if something's out of tune with itself, it bugs me. I'm much more likely to cringe over off-pitch notes when they're flat. If they're sharp, I might notice them, but they don't seem to bother me nearly as much. Also, I seem to forgive other people's intonation more easily than I'll forgive my own. My husband's the same way.
But really bad intonation does bug us. We both listened to only about half of the first act of the "Live from Lincoln Center" broadcast of "Aida" this past Sunday and then shut it off, because four soloists were so grossly off-pitch. Spectacular sets, but I've never heard worse from professionals (stuffed like sausages into too-tight costumes). Unfortunately, these broadcasts are supposed to attract a new audience to grand opera, but I'm guessing the new audience, if any, fled from "Aida" in horror and won't willingly listen to opera again. It was that bad. And the concept of *acting* seemed to escape these singers. As in times of yore, they nearly always performed their arias by facing the audience squarely, ignoring the rest of the cast, planting their feet apart, flinging their arms wide and bellowing. Maybe the singers pulled themselves together later in the broadcast -- I hope so -- but we couldn't stand to stick around to find out.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
Post Edited (2010-02-05 15:42)
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2010-02-05 17:45
There's an old saying, "It's better to be sharp than out of tune". There's really something to that because many times, unless playing octaves or unisons, sharp sounds brilliant and flat sounds ugly or unfocused. I rarely use vibrato in my playing but if I'm playing a passage with someone that can't or won't adjust and or uses a wide vibrato like a few strings players do, I will vibrate a little to hide the pitch if I can't focus in. ESP
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Author: Sylvain
Date: 2010-02-05 19:19
Two things come to my mind.
One, it's unclear whether the tuner truly registered the pitch, especially with background music going on. I find it hard to believe that Julian Bliss's pitch varies this wildly especially given the equipment he has.
Two, intonation is all about context, where you are in the harmonic structure, where the band is in terms of pitch... Good players constantly listen and adjust so that it sounds in tune, which in the end is all that matters, irrespective of what the tuner needle says.
This is why electronic tuners can be so unhelpful. They are great to figure out where your pitch is or what your instrument tendencies are. Unfortunately, they do not train you to *listen* to what is going on around you and adjust accordingly.
There are a multitude of ear training/intonation tools which help you train to listen to in-tune vs out of tune. One such example is the "tune up" system.
--
Sylvain Bouix <sbouix@gmail.com>
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2010-02-05 20:28
Sylvain wrote:
> This is why electronic tuners can be so unhelpful. They are
> great to figure out where your pitch is or what your instrument
> tendencies are. Unfortunately, they do not train you to
> *listen* to what is going on around you and adjust accordingly.
Yup. We haven't used a tuner in band since I don't know when. Some of us insist to tune their instrument upon assembling and warming up, but that's more of a ritual than something else.
(We do spend a considerable part of the band warm-up to play ourselves into tune, but we use our ears rather than an electronic device)
It's very liberating.
--
Ben
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Author: Dan Shusta
Date: 2010-02-05 21:35
Sylvain,
I rechecked Julian Bliss' perforance in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6kQW17zBWg only this time I set my CA-30 for A=442.
Problem solved. The great majority of his notes were either at zero or very close to it.
There is a solo part about one minute into the performance where I could check his intonation quite accurately.
When I realized where he was playing, I knew my tuner was set wrong.
Ahhhhhh....my faith is restored in tuners again.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2010-02-06 11:16
I still think the best tuner is the one between our ears. I remember when I was in grammar school, when my mom had to find a new piano tuner after our favorite one retired. She interviewed piano tuners on the phone by asking them whether they used oscilloscopes. (Remember those? We're talking about the 1950s.) One of the tuners bristled at the question and snapped, "No, I do not use an oscilloscope! I have EARS!" That was what she'd been waiting to hear. She hired him -- and he was a brilliant piano tuner.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: srattle
Date: 2010-02-06 13:53
Intonation is always important, period.
Perhaps the most important thing as an instrumentalist.
Electronic tuners are pretty much useless is real world application. Fine if you want to tune one note on your own, but otherwise you should put it away. . .
Also, if you and the bassoon player sitting next you you are both bang on 'green' it has very little bearing that you are actually in tune with each other. Color, density, focus and volume all play a huge role in intonation.
Try it out for yourselves. find a bassoon player (or any other wind player) and individually tune with a tuner. then play together, and I bet you'll still have to do something to be as in tune as you can be
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2010-02-06 14:15
Yeah, a tuner is like a compass, it roughly tells you the direction to your house. But in order to find your bed, you still need your eyes. :-)
--
Ben
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Author: johng ★2017
Date: 2010-02-06 14:44
Sylvain wrote:
> This is why electronic tuners can be so unhelpful. They are
> great to figure out where your pitch is or what your instrument
> tendencies are. Unfortunately, they do not train you to
> *listen* to what is going on around you and adjust accordingly.
I agree with everything said about tuners except for this: they CAN train you to listen by presenting your pitch in a visual way. Using a drone note, use a tuner pick-up so your playing is isolated in the tuner. Then play your note and watch AND LISTEN to the results. If you are playing a major third above the drone, then your pitch on the tuner should be 14 cents flatter than the tuner's Equal Temperament pitch in order to get to the perfect sounding interval (Just Intonation). Yes, your ear should tell you, but we also live in a very visual world and I find this is a good technique for showing students what I am talking about.
A tuner pick-up is an inexpensive item that attaches gently to your instrument.
John Gibson, Founder of JB Linear Music, www.music4woodwinds.com
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Author: Sylvain
Date: 2010-02-06 17:32
Don't get me wrong I use a tuner all the time. I have a big solo coming up in Tosca (3rd act), and I have been realizing (thanks to tuner) that I am going flat when going loud and high. Now I pay special attention in rehearsal/performance not to let these notes go too low.
At home I don't have the context of the orchestra so I check with a tuner where I'm at. I then try to adapt in performance to what is going on in real time and what I've learned, with the help of the tuner, *a priori*, in the practice room.
--
Sylvain Bouix <sbouix@gmail.com>
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Author: soybean
Date: 2010-02-08 07:18
Another thing to remember, especially in the case of your Patti Page recording (but any recording really) is that it was recorded on tape with an analog tape machine. These tape speeds can vary making things drift away from 440. Tape can also stretch over the years. Even today's digital recordings can have unintentional pitch shifts. for instance, sample rates not matching.
~Dan
(Leblanc Bliss, Buffet R13 key of A, Yamaha 250 Bb)
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Author: Bassie
Date: 2010-02-08 07:51
To play perfectly in tune with others, you have to be able to pull your pitch slightly.
But to do THAT consistently, your instrument has to be basically in tune with itself...
(Pianos, of course, do neither of these things, which makes piano tuning a particularly difficult science / art!)
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2010-02-08 13:49
A complicating factor with pianos is that today, most are stretch-tuned. That means the bass is tuned to A=440 or A=442, depending on the customer's preference, but the treble, from middle C on up, is tuned sharper and sharper, progressively, toward the right-hand end of the keyboard. Apparently the reason is to accomodate string solists who tune sharper for "brilliance" these days.
I wasn't aware of just how extreme stretch-tuning could get until I began to think that my clarinets and saxes sounded horribly flat in the clarion. Then I turned pages for the pianist when my husband's string quartet played quintets with her acoustic Steinway grand. Her piano sounded flat upstairs, too. Whoops. That pianist is a professional, an excellent piano teacher with a first-rate piano-tuner who visits often. No way would she play on a flat treble.
When I went home and checked the tuning on my piano, which is an electronic Yamaha Clavinova CLP-811, a bit of further research told me the manufacturer had waaaaay overdone the stretch tuning. The time I'd spent practicing my piano had re-tuned my brain! Fortunately, this piano has a feature that lets the user re-tune the whole keyboard to a standard (including several historic tuning systems, such as mean-tone) or re-tune a note at a time. I reeled in that treble so that it's still stretched slightly, but within the average limit observed by most piano-tuners today. All of a sudden I liked my clarinet and saxophone playing a lot better.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: Koo Young Chung
Date: 2010-02-08 14:09
To Shusta,
Didn't you say that some recordings vary -30 to +30 cents according to your tuner?
When the pitch varies from negative to positive,the difference in pitch doesn't matter whether you set it at 440 or 442 or any other number.
The difference in pitch variation is same,that is -30 to +30 is 60 cents difference whether you set your tuner to 435 or 445.
According to your observation,Bliss is still off 20-25 cents no matter what your A is set to.
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Author: Dan Shusta
Date: 2010-02-08 14:44
Koo,
With my tuner set to 442, Julian was consistently high and (to the best of my recollection), never went into the negative region.
If you'll recall from my last response: "I rechecked Julian Bliss' performance... only this time I set my CA-30 for A=442. Problem solved. The great majority of his notes were either at zero or very close to it." (I finally realized that he was not playing in the U.S. but most likely in the U.K.)
When I reset the tuner to 442, everything came closer to zero, even the symphony, which at times would go all the way to +30 at times!
And, as soybean mentioned above, pitches in recordings can unintentionally shift whether having been recorded on tape or by digital means.
(It was the various recordings of "Stranger on the Shore" which had the great "pitch swings" from -30 to +30.)
I'm beginning to see much more clearly now, just how difficult it is to play a clarinet "in tune" when so many other different types of instruments are on the musical scene!!!
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Author: mrn
Date: 2010-02-08 17:43
One thing no one seems to have touched on yet is that Acker Bilk is a jazz clarinetist. I realize Stranger on the Shore isn't exactly jazz, but Bilk's playing is still jazz-influenced, even in "Stranger."
In jazz, intonation is important as an expressive device. (Not that classical players don't do the same sort of thing, but in classical music, it's a lot more subtle.) Moreover, jazz musicians generally take a different approach to intonation.
In classical playing (or singing), we're generally trained to stay "on top of the pitch," which is essentially what Ed P was saying. Classical wisdom says it's better to be sharp than flat. And actually that's pretty true across the board--it has to do with the way we hear things.
In jazz (and some other music styles), though, it's not unusual to come from the other direction--to sing/play below the pitch (in many cases working your way up to pitch in the process). Done well, it can sound really good--but it's hard to do well, and I'd say that the ability to pull it off well is one of the things that distinguishes really good jazz musicians from mediocre ones. It's an expressive effect and you use it in certain instances where it helps you get the musical point across. The so-called "blue notes" (slightly flattened mediants, dominants, and leading tones) are an example of this.
When I was a kid I used to try to plunk out jazz or pop melodies on an electronic keyboard. It used to puzzle me that there were notes that I could sing, but that never quite sounded right on the keyboard (they sounded too "square"). Of course, I later on (with additional musical training) realized why--you simply can't play with expressive intonation on a keyboard instrument, because it's permanently tuned in equal temperament.
I eventually learned, though, that there are some tricks pianists use to simulate expressive intonation. For instance, Floyd Cramer was able to mimic the intonation of a country singer through upward-moving appoggiatura-like figures in his country hit "Last Date.": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPDobvAU0dE (Compare Cramer's recording with this vocal version by Conway Twitty, for instance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYT3cr8lYOc&feature=related)
Another piano trick you hear a lot is to play the two equal-temperament notes on either side of the blue note you want (a minor second). Freddie Slack does this in "House of Blue Lights" (also listen for a masterful command of expressive intonation by Ella Mae Morse): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO5ysmjLlaw (This is one of my favorite recordings of all time, incidentally--it's just so much fun.)
Anyway, the moral of the story is that when you're talking about jazz or jazz-influenced playing, what is "good" or "right" intonation is quite often vastly different from equal temperament--even more so than in classical playing. So I wouldn't expect Acker Bilk to keep the needle centered for long, even if he's right on with his intonation in a musical sense.
Of course, the other complicating factor with trying to measure his intonation is that he plays with a rather wide vibrato, which will likely confuse an electronic tuner (since vibrato is a modulation of pitch). We perceive his average frequency over time as the pitch he's on, whereas I would expect an electronic tuner to sample the pitch over a much shorter period of time.
Post Edited (2010-02-08 17:45)
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2010-02-09 10:47
All of these things about pitch and not being "abrasive to the ear" is all a matter of your sensitivity to it. Personally, it drives me up the wall.
For me, listening to a lot of greats on several instruments makes me think nothing but "They are so out of tune."
Also, I have noticed some things about orchestra intonation. Generally, woodwinds are higher than the strings, and brass are lower than the strings. It seems to be rather consistent in most orchestra recordings no matter what country the orchestra is from. Timpanis tend to be a little high.
The most important thing to consider is the relation of intonation of the instrument to *itself* not the other instruments. Although trumpets are on the low side, the lowness is consistent within the section and all the notes are generally "in tune" with each other, but not with the strings or woodwinds.
However, even though they are *generally* in tune with themselves, the woodwinds tend to have wide intonation and the brass tend to have narrow intonation.
Also, when woodwinds and strings play quickly, the pitch for that brief period is higher than when they play slowly.
After hearing it so consistently in so many recordings of so many orchestras that I consider it a performance practice.
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2010-02-09 16:11
Interesting discussion.
I practice often with a tuner on my stand so that I can learn what to do to keep my playing even tempered.
But, when I play with others, the tuner stays in my case; and I try to listen to my group.
Our ww5 has started to stop --that is to stop and linger on a particular chord to analyze where each of us should be with our pitch contribution to the overall sound. Its wonderful!
In recent work on a Danzi quintet, there is a "nasty" several measures where he purposely made the clarinet and horn clash. We struggled to resolve the dissonance while the others cringed. A stop and analysis showed us that we need to just brazen it out and wait for Danzi to resolve the (extreme) tension. We wonder how that's going to go over with our next audience.
Bob Phillips
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Author: RoBass
Date: 2010-02-11 12:33
Normally an "absolute ear" or the relative version can grid tones into 1/4 tone steps. This will be a <25% stepping. But most of musicians fail this test with more than 50%, and therefore a "clean" sound could be deviating more than 50% without any dissonance effect.
The slurring bindings are less harmed by such "misintonation" than the staccato-versions because the relative stepping is more covered by the slurr. But don't be angry about your intonation! A solo part comes better than a part in comparation to other musicians ;-) There's no comparation base.
And if there's a deviation to hear, who konws, who's wrong?
kindly
Roman
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