GC wrote:Actually, some people are very sensitive to the difference, and some situations make it stand out. I bought the Korg just before playing for a musical where bass guitar and bassoon often had doubled lines. When I was with my tuner and the bassoonist was with hers, I was always just a little above her, and it was fairly easy to tell. After stopping to listen to her against the group for a few minutes, I realized that she was usually dead-on pitch almost all the time. I also felt that I was staying sharp, so I pulled my pitch down a bit, and we meshed. We got together with a couple of others who had these tuners and checked it out. The others registered the same, and mine was off by 1 Hz.
We're talking apples and oranges.
I never said that we were talking about the same thing. My issue is peripheral to yours. It was prompted by the "tuners don't lie" (or something like that) comment. They most certainly do, partly because they're fallible, and partly because they're misused. The ear has to be the final arbiter.
Perhaps some folks are using defective tuners, but if they rely on them and not their ears I think they're missing the point of these devices. As Robert pointed out, there's no substitute for ears...tuners ought to just make it easier for everyone to start "on the same page."
Todd S. "who thinks some of the worst players, tuning-wise, he's played with are the ones staring at a tuner on the stand while they play" Malicoate
Absolutely. I discovered the problem with the tuner because I used my ears and didn't blindly rely on it. I'm just worried that defective ones can cause even more problems. Tuners DO lie if they're defective, and people are lying to themselves if they think that a tuner can tell them if they're on pitch no matter what the chord or progression. I'm in one group where the conductor insists that everyone have a tuner on his stand (which doesn't do a tuba player with an upright bell much good, anyway). He really only uses them as a reference when someone's obviously way off pitch, but I wish he'd just put them away and train everyone better on tuning by ear. He has worked quite a bit on adjustment of the third and fifth, and it has definitely helped.
JP/Sterling 377 compensating Eb; Warburton "The Grail" T.G.4, RM-9 7.8, Yamaha 66D4; for sale > 1914 Conn Monster Eb (my avatar), ca. 1905 Fillmore Bros 1/4-size Eb, Bach 42B trombone
GC wrote:I never said that we were talking about the same thing. My issue is peripheral to yours. It was prompted by the "tuners don't lie" (or something like that) comment. They most certainly do, partly because they're fallible, and partly because they're misused. The ear has to be the final arbiter.
You are correct...defective tuners do lie. I was wrong to be so sweeping in my comment.
Todd S. "thinking a 1Hz misalignment in his Korg would have mattered not at all to James' predicament" Malicoate
This thread is a pretty good text book for Musicianship 101.
I'm an old duffer in a community band who finally began to play more or less in tune about 5 years ago.
There is one comment that hasn't been stressed here: One of the main functions of the bass line is to set the tonality. So we really need to lead rather than match what others do. May be a different issue if you're working with soloist, piano, organ, etc.
That came home to me one rehearsal when conductor was having trouble getting clarinets to play their stuff in tune and she said, "Listen to the tuba.... you have to build on that!" Love to hear things like that.
In this same band some of us have tuning problems because conductor wants to tune A=442. They bought a set of bells at that pitch. I can barely get my Miraphone 182 up there... tuning slide has to be all the way in. Then out in the gazeebo when the sun goes down and the horn cools off and goes flat I have trouble. We all have trouble. Second half of concert is always a bit off.
But, I've also found that I can sometimes get the band to tune below A=442 if I fill the reahearsal hall with tones at A=440 before lead clarinet sounds his tuning tone. I'm just trying to get everybody listening to my version of the tuning note. That's fun, and works until bells have a solo passage against some chords.
Some general comments, since the topic has broadened to tuning in general:
1. All musicians need to train their pitch memory. Having a tuner on the stand during long tones is a useful technique for training our brains to recognize pitch, and for calibrating our ears. Tuners are not evil, and they can support our ability to hear pitch.
2. Tuning chords is not the same thing as pitch memory. Tuning chords is about resonance, not about frequency. The pitches of the interior notes must resonate with the root to create an in-tune chord. (The same applies to overtones within the instrument, which are about resonance rather than frequency.)
3. Pianos have a characteristic sound that is based on the even temperament. The chords are not in tune, but then the way the piano has a more broadbanded sound. Ditto large ensembles in some situations. For example, there is no way a string section will ever be in tune with itself such that it creates the resonance of which Doc speaks. Why? They are all using vibrato. But that is the characteristic sound of a string section, and a section in that case will never sound like an individual. Nor should it.
4. Those who claim "perfect pitch" just have really well-trained pitch memory (or a natural talent for good pitch memory). Those who complain that they cannot abide a group being slightly flat or sharp have over-trained pitch memory and probably need to work on developing a more flexible pitch concept. After all, A being 440 Hz is a convention, not a constant of the universe.
5. Many people who play instruments are amateurs and have neither the talent nor the time to learn pitch memory at that level or to achieve the literacy of which Mitch speaks. But we can all strive for it. I, for one, can't do it. I still need to play through something before I can learn the pitches well, but then nobody pays me to sight-read. (If you need someone to adjust traffic signal timings from intuition rather than analysis, then I'm your man.) Not having this skill does not preclude making effective music. Audiences usually do not have this training, and often cannot recognize good tuning that brings tears of joy to those who can (I can recognize it when others are playing).
6. I can bend the pitches of my Holton at least 20 cents one way or the other. I can bend them 10 cents one way or the other without appreciably affecting the tone. Part of the reason for that pitch flexibility is that the instrument provides a range of resonant frequencies instead of just one. In electronics, we would say that the resonant circuit has lower Q, or that it is a bit broadbanded. If I don't hear the pitches properly, they will be wrong, and I cannot rely on the sound quality of the note to signal when it is right. I once played under a band-clinician type of conductor who insisted he could tell I was off-pitch because my sound was not resonant. What he didn't realize was that on that note on that tuba, the resonant pitch was out of tune. When I played it with the resonance he demanded, the band could not tune to it. But he was happy. Sheesh. There is a difference between frequency and resonance (in this case, the resonance that creates the instrument's overtones). That tuba needed a whole different tuning strategy that I had not yet learned.
7. The resonance of just tuning in chords was discovered in the early Renaissance, if not earlier. Some modern music, however, seeks dissonance and just tuning may not be appropriate in those cases. It's pretty hard to tune a semitone or a major 7th for zero beats, but we can still train our ears for what it should sound like.
8. If one is pushed all the way in and playing flat, it makes me wonder what sort of sound they are producing. Surely they are fighting the natural resonance of the instrument, unless that particular note resonates flat on that particular instrument.
9. The practice room is where we learn the relationship between resonance and pitch for our instruments.
10. Chamber groups are were we learn the relationship between resonance and pitch when playing with other instruments.
11. Large ensembles are where we apply the results of 9 and 10, not where we learn them.
Tuning is about practice, familiarity, and repetition. Bad intonation, repeated enough times, becomes more acceptable to those exposed to it.
However, I have to disagree with many posters on this thread about the use of tuners on stands. I believe there is a place and an application for them that makes them beneficial. First, I've noticed that some conductors are often "fooled" by the color of a sound when it comes to intonation - often times, a player with a bright sound will be noted as sharp, and player with a very dark sound will be noted as flat - or by the register of the note being played. In these instances I find a tuner to be a sanity check for me when the direction I am receiving is contrary to the actual physics of the sound being produced.
Second, one of the ensembles I've recently joined has a very bad case of playing sharper as a whole as they get louder, but some people are *actually starting to listen* to me for their pitch reference. Again, having a tuner available allows me to perform sanity checks when I KNOW something is off - I don't just check my pitch, but the pitch of the others around me, for my own information. Sometimes you find a group where someone is REALLY off on their relative pitch (like 94% of all Bari Sax players) and having a tuner handy can help identify where the hell he's going to be at certain times.
I'm a pitch Nazi. I don't see the point of playing with good time and a good sound if the pitch is going to be bad. It's kept me from joining groups. It's led me to leave groups. It's the one thing the majority of groups can fix to make themselves sound better by leaps and bounds almost overnight. I view pitch and time as my responsibility in every ensemble I play with, because my failure in one of those areas makes the group sound worse. And with all that in mind, if I can place a $20 piece of technology on my stand to serve as an occasional reference for something that is completely relative, I'm going to do it. I don't live by it, it's turned off more than it's on, but it does have a place and application IMHO.
kingrob76 wrote:However, I have to disagree with many posters on this thread about the use of tuners on stands. I believe there is a place and an application for them that makes them beneficial...having a tuner available allows me to perform sanity checks when I KNOW something is off...if I can place a $20 piece of technology on my stand to serve as an occasional reference for something that is completely relative, I'm going to do it. I don't live by it, it's turned off more than it's on, but it does have a place and application IMHO.
I'm wondering who you disagree with...sounds just like what everyone else has been saying about tuners used in ensembles.
Let me be more clear...I find the players who constantly stare at the tuners, while the ensemble is playing, to be the "problem." They are the most unwilling to change their pitch to help the ensemble, and usually the ones with the worst pitch to begin with (at least in my experiences). They also tend to sit in the first couple of rows...who would have thought?
I don't remember seeing any post in this thread contrary to what you posted. The key words are "occasional reference" and "turned off more than it's on."
Yeah, on second read, when I'm not so bleary-eye tired, I guess I don't disagree. Sleep deprivation - it's more fun than one should legally be allowed to have.
Rick Denney wrote:Some general comments, since the topic has broadened to tuning in general: 1,2,3,4,...
Rick "better at saying it than doing it" Denney
I agree with all except #4. Your version does not correspond to the literature I have studied.
an interesting topic. and there are several parts to it. The comments on the band director are quite interesting. Way back when I was in Marching band in college, which was NOT part of the music department, but part of the 'student activities and services' (or some such) department our director spent very little time on the tuning of chords/parts/sections. We spent more time on the ensemble intonation and 'color' that a peice was looking for (the brightness of a march, the heavy distortion of guitar driven rock and roll, the light driving rythmic intensity of latin disco).
Rick Denney wrote:Some general comments, since the topic has broadened to tuning in general: 1,2,3,4,...
Rick "better at saying it than doing it" Denney
I agree with all except #4. Your version does not correspond to the literature I have studied.
Rick Denney wrote:Some general comments, since the topic has broadened to tuning in general: 1,2,3,4,...
Rick "better at saying it than doing it" Denney
I agree with all except #4. Your version does not correspond to the literature I have studied.
What part doesn't correspond?
"4. Those who claim 'perfect pitch' just have really well-trained pitch memory (or a natural talent for good pitch memory)."
I haven't been following this thread, but now that I'm caught up, a couple thoughts come to mind.
With respect to perfect pitch, I've encountered a few common misconceptions. For one, it's not ideal. For those with true perfect pitch, they encounter difficulty hearing chord quality versus hearing the pitches of the chord. In other words, they can identify a chord as "minor" because they identify c-eb-g and know that comprises a minor chord, as opposed to hearing the chord as a single entity and recognizing that collective/conglomerate sound as "minor." This is often the source of what drives them nuts listening to an ensemble. According to a teacher of mine, it's also susceptible to changes in diet and hormonal fluctuation. This is a teacher who's been solicited to participate in studies of perfect pitch.
There is such a thing as acquired pitch. This is, by some measures, far better than perfect pitch, as you gain the convenience of having pitch without the aforementioned limitations. This is the aspect of learning to which I referred in my earlier post. It's actually easy to acquire, it's simply not been included in American pedagogy. For all that music ed. folks like to get together and pat themselves on the back about, they're really failing. Kids graduate high school with a skill level that were the same skill level carried over to reading and math, parents would be screaming in the streets about their failing schools. It would be like an 18-year-old still needing his fingers for 4+4 or having to sound out t-u-b-a before reading it, or, worse yet, not knowing what sound a "t" makes. Imagine...the valedictorian getting up to give the speech at graduation and saying, "Can you give me the sound for this 'U?' Okay...now I can start." Just as children are taught that each letter of the alphabet (all 26 and the variations for the variable ones) is a representation of a particular sound or sound set, beginners should and can be taught that each written note (only twelve, without variation) represents a particular sound, i.e., pitch. Do you need help visualizing "orange" without a flash card, or can you close your eyes and imagine "orange?" You may not even need to close your eyes. Can you remember the smell of a particular favorite dinner your mom would make when you were a kid? Can you remember what a flower petal feels like? Can you remember the sound of someone's voice without them being in the room? The brain has such amazing capacity for recall that in most music pedagogy goes neglected. C has a sound. D has a sound. Regardless of instrument or octave, i.e., timbre, a pitch is a pitch that, when learned, can be recalled without fail. It's just not taught. It wasn't until I studied with a particular teacher who taught me this (after I'd already completed two degrees) that I was aware of the simplicity of it all. (By the way, I believe she's starting at Vanderbilt in the fall for all y'all down there. Her last name is Ploger. If you can, get lessons.) Granted, I always had good ears...I never took "ear training;" I tested out of it completely in both undergrad and grad school. But studying under the other approach, it was like a whole new set of ears. In a very short amount of time, I was hearing ensembles in a whole new light, hearing ensemble and section and individuals simultaneously. And it felt ridiculously easy.
Good ensemble tuning and blending has more to do with ego than ears. Ensembles with problems, IMHO, often have problems due to individuals with the "I'm right, so you need to tune to me" attitude. It's when you find ensembles, large or small, where, without exception, the participating members are selfless enough that "You know what...I'll take your F...that's good" is the prevailing process that the ensemble sound, including intonation, is better. What determines that ensemble environment? Usually the person up front.
"My tuner says I'm right so I'm sticking to it" = "Screw you"
The Elephant wrote:Also, I would frequently have a digital tuner tell me something that differed from what the ears of my colleagues and myself told us.
I'm glad someone of your skills is willing to say this. Quite apart from discussions of temperaments and chordal tuning, sometimes the electronic tuners hear the overtones differently than our ears do. I can play octaves that center the needle but that just plain sound wrong. Maybe I can't hear octaves, but it's comforting to know that it isn't just me.
Sometimes, I have recorded my sound and done analysis on it using Cool Edit and its built-in FFT spectral analysis. It will show all the overtones, and then claim that the note is something a whole harmonic different than what I was playing. These things can be fooled by strong upper harmonics in ways the human ear can't, and tubas do not and should not produce perfect sine waves.
I had gone back to my old analog Korg AT-12 after becoming frustrated with a CA-30. But I was never able to use it for more than just basic tuning, and I could never see how the overtones were lining up, which one can see on a strobe tuner.
So, when Robert identified the VSAM last week, I explore the price thinking it would be pricey. It could have been a lot cheaper than a strobe tuner and still cost a grand or more. That's in the "consult spouse first" category. But for $250, I don't need approval, heh, heh. I have one on the way, and it should be hear in the next day or two. That's about the same (in actual dollars) as what I paid for the AT-12 back when digital tuners (even with analog needles) were still new.
I use a tuner like this for calibrating my ears. It sits on the stand quite a lot as I go through my long-tone exercises. I don't always look at it, but I frequently adjust my buzz to optimize the richness of the sound and then look and see where the pitch is. This is how I deal with bit issues on the instrument, which centers everything such that I can make adjustments without venturing too far away from optimal.
Rick "curious to see how the VSAM compares to the others" Denney
