Author: Dutchy
Date: 2007-12-14 12:59
For me, the most important question would be, have you been flat up till now when playing with others?
If not--if you've been routinely playing in tune with others, or with your teacher, or with a piano, and it's only just now when your teacher brought out the tuner that you discovered you were flat when compared to the tuner--then I wouldn't worry about it. Lots of instruments, and players, can come up a few cents flat when asked to sit there and drone on an arbitrary pitch with an electronic tuner, but in actual practice, playing with other musicians, everything seems to even out and the piece comes out in tune.
And I'd want to know why your teacher chose this point to bring out the tuner? Have other musicians been giving you dirty looks because you're flat?
Or was it just because your teacher thought it would be interesting to see how your pitch compares with the cold, hard standard of a tuner, and lo and behold! You're flat.
If you haven't been having problems playing in tune with other people without compromising your embouchure--in other words, if your teacher only brought out the tuner as a sort of novelty or diversion, and not because s/he was trying to show you how flat you really are all the time--then I wouldn't worry too much about it, and I certainly wouldn't use it as the occasion to plunge myself into a crisis of reedmaking self-examination. If your reeds have been serving you well up to now without the piano player rising from her bench in irritation and bashing you over the head with the piano light, then I wouldn't spend an inordinate amount of time trying to re-think your entire reedmaking approach.
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