Author: HautboisJJ
Date: 2005-11-08 17:47
Tuning - Intonation - Tone: They’re Player Responsibilities
by John Darling
I recently finished reading “Rehearsing the Band” by John E. Williamson. It is a compilation of thoughts and advice from eleven of the country’s more successful wind band conductors. One of the common pieces of advice that all of these educators commented on dealt with the fact that tuning, intonation, and tone production should not be separated. Furthermore, we as conductors can do nothing physically to affect any changes to these elements; they are player responsibilities. Certainly we can stop and make verbal corrections as they arise in rehearsal, but we can’t do that in the middle of a performance. Ideally we strive to train our students to learn to identify problems and make the proper adjustments on their own.
One of the early issues that I address with any new group is the fact that just because we all agree to a given reference pitch in tuning process, it doesn’t mean that intonation is no longer an issue. Many students are seldom taught that every instrument is different and that never is an instrument in tune with itself. Certain notes on their particular instrument may be more out of tune than other notes, and, that between any two instruments, the same notes are going to have different variances. It’s an important first step in training them to understand the concept that tuning and intonation issues don’t stop after the warm-up; they must constantly adjust their instrument’s variances to the whole ensemble. The next step is to get them to understand that A=440 is only a reference point; it can’t be a constant. The pitch center will change as the ensemble warms up and eventually as fatigue issues creep in. One of my pet peeves is the player who has a tuner on their stand and claims: “I played that note in tune. It’s someone else who’s out of tune.” Somehow I failed to get the message across.
Training our students to listen, make adjustments, and take responsibility for tuning and intonation can be frustrating and tedious. But the end result is an ensemble that performs better on multiple levels. There is only so much that we can do to improve their technical facility on their instruments. (This too is a player/personal responsibility.) However, we can make them better musical performers; ones who are sensitive to the issues about how music could sound. A grade 2 piece played out of tune is not very fulfilling for anyone. But that same piece performed in tune and with sensitivity toward the musical aspects crafted into that piece can be very rewarding for the students, the conductor, and ultimately the audience. A piece with many notes, played very fast and loud can be heard on any concert. The groups that I tend to remember are the ones who perform the slower, more reflective pieces with outstanding musical awareness.
Listed below are some of the highlights regarding tuning, intonation, and tone from “Rehearsing the Band.” If you don’t own this book, I urge you to buy it. (It’s not very expensive.) If nothing else, it will reaffirm issues that some of you may be teaching to your students; it feels good to know that you’re not alone. In addition, there are numerous time-proven tidbits of advice given by some of today’s best conductors/educators. After 26 years of working in the business of music, it never ceases to amaze me how much I still have to learn (or haven’t remembered to try).
INTONATION
Below is a digest of some of the comments by these important conductors.
Frank Battisti: Band intonation is unique – I know of no other organization that buys so much tuning equipment, and spends so much time on tuning, yet plays so out of tune! The word listen should be used from the very beginning and regularly throughout the rehearsal. Listening skills have to be taught, and that means there has to be an opportunity for students to show the teacher that they are listening. Procedures should vary, otherwise the students will go into automatic drive; and that means they are not listening. To help my high school players understand the basic tendencies of each instrument, I made out a “strobe schedule” using a buddy system. One would play while the other watched and reported discrepancies.
Donald Hunsberger: It’s a matter of learning what they need to do on their instrument. Frequently with young players, I’ll suggest they sit down with a strobe and use the buddy system where one plays a scale and the other checks it on the tuner, making a graph showing the deviations.
Craig Kirchhoff: Pitch awareness is crucial. Even at the college level, some students aren’t sure, so I require them to pair up three times during the semester. Each player establishes the pitch level at A=440, then one plays the chromatic scale while the other operates the tuner and marks down the number of cents each pitch is away from being in tune.
John Whitwell: I learned from Elizabeth Green the importance of instrumentalists singing to develop what she called tuning “radar:” the ability to hear a pitch before it is played.
H. Robert Reynolds: Up through the high school level, I think the students should first sing the note they are going to play, so the sound goes inside the head, promoting the desired awareness of pitch…as opposed to the external imposition of it. Also, singing can be used throughout the course of a rehearsal. It is effective with single pitches or with full phrases.
TONE
John Whitwell: Tuning is closely connected to tone production, and many times an intonation problem is a symptom of a tone production problem.
Jerry Junkin: It is impossible to have good intonation without good basic tone quality. What it comes down to in a rehearsal, is to never let down.
Craig Kirchhoff: I don’t spend a lot of time tuning; but I do spend time on the quality of the sound – getting the kids to use air in a certain way and to fit their sounds into other sounds.
Eugene Corporon: We often forget to work on getting sections to “match sounds,” not just to “play in tune.” If you’re out of tune, the first thing you should do is not pull or push, but to be sure you’re “in-tone,” because you might be doing something wrong in the production of the sound that makes it out of tune. Often pitch improves when you simply play your best centered sound.
H. Robert Reynolds: Tuning is not an isolated area. It is closely related to tone and precision. Actually, everything in the rehearsal has to do with the players being able to hear their part, everybody else’s part, and the resulting relationship. The person who plays in tune has three things: (1) the right concept in the ear, (2) the right physical set up, and (3) the ability to predict what the next pitch will be.
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