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I spend quite a lot of time playing with the tuner to prevent my hearing from getting lazy and realize that I can't hit the perfect pitch all the time.
I regularly check whether my hearing is correct by closing my eyes/looking away from the tuner and then checking the tuner for the ruthless realities.
Sometimes I can be about +- 5 cents off pitch - sometimes even more when overpitching (to my knowledge the human ears are more tolerant in relation to overpitching).

I wonder how bad that is? I mean: The tuner tells me that I'm sometimes slightly off pitch, but will that be audible in an audience?
How much off pitch is considered to be acceptable from a listeners point of view?
I'm aware that tuning in an orchestra is a very different thing, and that this is an neverending process, but I get a little disillusioned when playing at home with my tuner realizing that my ears are'nt allways as spot on as I would dream of.
Since we as tubists are the fundamentals of a good orchestral tuning we need to be as perfectly in tune as possible.

Stay tuned
Bertil

If you're bringing interesting things to the table like impeccable phrasing, nuance, color, and style then a multitude of intonation sins will be forgiven. The inverse is also kinda true.

Whipping yourself for any mistakes made in the practice room is part of the game. It keeps you on your toes and the brain kind of needs that, I think. You use the tuner the way I do. -+5 is great, but it's not perfect, haha.

I once heard that tuners don't measure your pitch at the tonic but at the overtones. If this is true then it might have to do with our instrument playing too low for the mics.

And as you well know pitch is relative because you play with others. If you are playing an E in the staff in an E major chord and the ensemble moves to a C major chord, your E might just have turned sharp if you don't let it sag just a tad.
Or the same situation but this time you also play the tonic in the C chord. This time it's the trumpets have the held over E and it's the melody. You might end up playing that C a tad higher so as to get it to fit into the music. etc etc.

The fact that you do this kind of training brings it's own rewards. Be satisfied with that.

the elephant wrote:Worry less about making a needle (or an LED) hit a certain spot. Worry much more about MATCHING others. If the entire ensemble is 15¢ sharp and you doggedly stick it where the tuner tells you to, it is YOU who are out of tune.

I think what you are doing is excellent work, but to help improve your skillset as well as possibly alter your point of view, I would *highly* recommend you play with drone pitches. (You can keep the tuner on, but use a clip-on bell flare mic so as to filter out a lot of the drone.) I have an excellent iPhone app that plays drones that I can tune to be sharp or flat as muc as I choose (up to about 50¢ either direction) and this helps me a lot. Our strings play flat most of the time if it is hot, while the brass push up when they are hot. Having the ability to work with in-tune drone pitches is great, but adding in the ability to practice playing in tune with those who are "out of tune" is a major boon to a player. Also, it can sound drones singly, in octaves, in 4ths and 5ths. This makes learning to play in tune within a chord possible. Playing steady tones against a single drone is great, and against an interval is, too, but PLAYING MELODIC LINES against a drone pitch is a fantastic use of one's practice time. I will link to a series of exercises I wrote for my students to use as an addition to the Tuning CD that many people used about ten or fifteen years ago. Find some nice drones yu can loop on your computer and give them a shot.

Here is my exercise, written in all keys, over and over, until you die of fatigue. They go as high or low as any sane person could ever wish to do. Pick some in a range that is comfortable for you.

Thanks for sharing the exercise!

What is the excellent iPhone app?

Adam C. wrote:If you're bringing interesting things to the table like impeccable phrasing, nuance, color, and style then a multitude of intonation sins will be forgiven. The inverse is also kinda true.

Audiences (other than sophisticated musicians) don't always hear intonation or even wrong notes but they react instantly to timing problems. IMO

For tuning practice I use the Cello Drones from Youtube. I don't know how much they paid that guy not to do vibrato but it was worth it.

I have a couple of theories. One is that cheap tuners have stabilized the center pitch of ensembles around 440, something that was not true when we were kids. The other is that pop songs using autotune accustom people to expect better pitch than in the past.

I'm going to chip in with a set of drones from our contrabassoon friends, with great overtones and a great range. I set my TV + sound system to play these at max volume and play along until my sound disappears into the drone, and it has really helped my ears. You can find them here

When I'm not able to use them, I use Tonal Energy tuner, which has worse sounds but is portable. It also has a feature I really like where it optionally is able to match whatever note you're playing with a perfectly in-tune drone - eg, I play an E in staff 15c flat, it will pick it up and play an E perfectly in tune so that I can hear that I need to bring my E up. This is great for trying to stay in tune with yourself horizontally, as it also has a tab that charts your intonation over time. It's about $3-5 depending on platform.

Another thing that should be mentioned is 'chorusing' or 'chorus effect' (slight detuning) in regards to ensemble intonation. 'Chorusing' is used in synthesizers, but also in large ensembles -- and if done well -- can make the overall sound thick and rich, and sound great. Too much detuning of 'chorusing', then it starts to sound out of tune. Too little, or none of it (some top pro orchestras/groups) and imo, they actually sound less rich in sound and too 'perfect' and antiseptic.

bloke wrote:More older recordings are more out-of-tune (all styles).

Some of the old 1950s-60s Chicago and New York Phil recordings from that era had "good-community-orchestra-intonation" at times. Still, I hear more passion/excitement from some of those old recordings than a lot of the "not-taking-any-chances-safe-playing" boring modern-day orchestras/recordings.

Years ago, I was sifting thru some old audio records with my mother. I put one on the turntable and started playing it. My mom remarked: "Who are they? They suck!" I said something to the effect; "Mom, that's the Philadelphia Orchestra!". Mom: "Well, they suck".
She said that because there were noticable pitch inconsistencies within the strings. It was an old record from probably 60+ years ago.

Try playing with drones, as others have said. For me drones helped me way more than a tuner ever did. All of sudden I could tell if a note was flat or sharp, which a lot of amateurs can't do. My focus in band switched from 'looking' to much more 'listening and matching others.' To use drones I just used the instuner app and some crappy headphones that let me hear the drone at the same time as hearing my tuba. Total cost was about $5 for the app but doing that has made a bigger change to my ensemble playing than a $100 tuba lesson.

I am really astounded that music teachers/conductors don't make playing with drones mandatory, I really wonder how much better amateur intonation could be if there was more use of drones. Or perhaps it just really works for me more than some others.

When I first started playing tuba in the early 80's, chromatic tuners were in their infancy. They were about the size of a paperback novel and had a big dial to rotate for pitch, a slider or knob for octave, and a large meter, and cost about $600 in 80's money. Maybe a middle or high school had a single one. Their predecessor was the strobe tuner which was even larger and more ungainley. At best, the average person might carry around a compact tuning fork not much bigger than a finger, many violinists had one in their case tuned to A. (Don't even get me started on pitch pipes...) By high school the portable chromatic tuners had improved and dropped to around $200, that is when I got one. Eventually they became automatic and then gradually more compact. The ubiquitous credit card sized tuner on the music stand or clipon tuner was something unheard of until relatively recent times. It is amusing to read about the Beatles traveling across town to get their guitars tuned before early gigs.

bloke wrote:...people completely accept "equal temperament + stretch" keyboard tuning (which is quite a compromise from individually tuning 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, and 6ths) so maybe (??) I'm wrong.

Several things. One is that the piano is rich in overtones, not all of which are going to fit a given tuning model precisely. Another is that the piano, being a percussion instrument, is more about rhythm and articulation than it is about sustained pitches, at least in the minds of hearers.

Does Autotune establish equal temperament? If so, how do they get those harmonies to line up? (I mean the harmonies that humans are actually singing.)

One person can be out of tune with some model, but few people have those models in their heads with any great accuracy. Two people can be out of tune, and maybe so can three, possibly four. But sections that cluster tightly around a pitch confuse the perceived pitch (and not necessarily in a bad way), given it a "section sound" rather than a "solo sound". That's especially true when the section players are using vibrato, which all string players do.

I was listening to a double-bass concerto last night on the classical radio station. (You know--radio--that magic medium that sends music and other content--wait for it--through space!)--without using any digital WiFi or LTE or 5G or anything else you have to pay to rent; but I digress.) The intonation was not pretty. But I expect the player was spending alot of time with his left hand about even with his thigh, where the notes are really close together. It sounded like Scotch that's a little too peaty tastes and smells (blame Doc for getting me on a Scotch kick).

I test my own intonation using recordings, not needles. I do really need to incorporate drones into my practice, but I'm afraid of further annoying the property manager, who already lives with my bad tuba playing. But recordings reveal TRVTH too, and even moreso when they are recordings made with others. I listen to the band's recordings with a critical ear. Is my pitch part of the solution or part of the problem? (It's a community band--pitch is always a problem at some level.) Usually, these days, it's part of the solution. I also ask the (professionally trained) trombone player in my quintet to specifically notify me when I present a note to him that he has to do something unusual to tune to, and he has obliged on a few notes that I was still working out on, say, a new tuba. When I play against the tuner, the needle tells one story, but when I play in ensembles, I hear another story, even on recordings.

All my strategies fall into what amateurs do, however, not what aspiring music majors should consider. Or maybe even aspiring amateurs.

Rick "striving for a tune too diffuse to recognize pitch in the first place " Denney

MartyNeilan wrote:When I first started playing tuba in the early 80's, chromatic tuners were in their infancy. They were about the size of a paperback novel and had a big dial to rotate for pitch, a slider or knob for octave, and a large meter, and cost about $600 in 80's money. Maybe a middle or high school had a single one. Their predecessor was the strobe tuner which was even larger and more ungainley. At best, the average person might carry around a compact tuning fork not much bigger than a finger, many violinists had one in their case tuned to A. (Don't even get me started on pitch pipes...) By high school the portable chromatic tuners had improved and dropped to around $200, that is when I got one. Eventually they became automatic and then gradually more compact. The ubiquitous credit card sized tuner on the music stand or clipon tuner was something unheard of until relatively recent times. It is amusing to read about the Beatles traveling across town to get their guitars tuned before early gigs.

I bought a Korg AT-12 in 1985, the year it came out, and it was perhaps the second portable auto-sensing chromatic tuner on the market (I think Boss made the first one a year or two earlier). I still have and use it--in fact I prefer it to LCD-screen tuners and apps. I don't recall the cost (it was a birthday present), but it wasn't cheap. Prior to that, I could only tune the instrument to an available piano, none of which are an unimpeachable source, especially those I had access to. Thus, it was a God-send.
Yes, I can remember pitches for some period of time--pick up an F tuba and instinctively know where F is. But if I hum it first, I'm screwed--the vocalization dashes the pitch memory.

But the old Korg, much as I use it, is still applying an equal-temperament standard, and I'm using eyes instead of ears.

Rick "needle games" Denney

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When I had my musical aptitude tests in 5th grade as the prerequisite to starting school band, my band director said I could discern two cents difference in pitches. It was so close that he ran the test twice on me, because he wasn't sure it was my ears actually discerning a difference, or the old reel-to-reel tape player that he had to make sure had a steady speed to the tape. Yes, an old Wollensak.

Recordings are much less forgiving of intonation foibles than a live performance. The sheer volume of a live performance versus most playback masks pitch discrimination.

Yane wrote:Recordings are much less forgiving of intonation foibles than a live performance. The sheer volume of a live performance versus most playback masks pitch discrimination.

Live listening is also more forgiving because most stereo recordings don't capture the whole sound field the way your ears hear it. Similarly, mono recordings (of orchestras or wind bands, anyway) sound less in tune than stereo.

Doc wrote:

bloke wrote:2nd-desk violist gyrating around as it they were the concertmaster...)

This is pure entertainment when you see it. Solid gold.

Well, that depends on the 2nd-desk violist, doesn't it?

Rick "some more gyration-worthy than others" Denney

Hey, it worked great in the 19thC.

Sensitivity to pitch is based on duration of pitch and frequency. For example, Fast low notes literally don’t produce sufficient frequency information for ears to determine if they are in tune. Slow high notes are easy to hear.

That being said- flexibility and control of your intonation is, as others have said, far more important than making the needle stick. Also, tuners are really bad at low tuba. So play against drones. I play songs against drones, listening carefully to the consonance and dissonance as I go. I start with playing the drone on the tonic, then a time or two on the dominant, then on whatever note I feel like. Your adjustments will be different against different drones.

I think much of it depends on the situation, like the tolerance level of a symphony player vs a teacher who works with young children.

If you're within 5 cents, I would worry more about balances, matching tone color and other more musical issues. Playing exactly together and balancing things will do 100 times more than pinning the tuning needle to the back wall.

And to offer an answer to your very first question, ever go to rock shows in crappy clubs?