musician, tune thyself

I am more or less convinced that my intonation sucks.

"But," you may be saying, "aren't you convinced that everything about your playing sucks?"

To which I can only reply, "Well, yes, but this one has some interesting specifics."¹

The specifics are thus:

1. I and most of my colleagues have been trained to listen and adjust at all times. I have personally been told several times that if it sounds out of tune, I should simply assume that it is me, and adjust accordingly. Now, I don't actually disagree with this reasoning, but it does mean that I have essentially been trained to always assume that I am out of tune.²

2. There is no excuse for me to be out of tune. Okay, yes, this applies to all instruments (except perhaps piano-like instruments and most percussion). But, I have less excuse than most. My instrument is essentially a bell and a tuning slide.

3. I do not play in groups with great intonation. I'm sorry, but it's true.³ Which means I spend rehearsals frantically fishing around with the slide, trying to find someone or something to match if at all possible. If it's any consolation, I personally own recordings of the world's top orchestras playing out of tune, so apparently it is a problem that doesn't go away.⁴

4. Does the orchestra play at A=440? Maybe they play at 441. Or 442. OH GOD MUST KNOW NOW. I always smile a bit when I get info for an audition and they include the orchestra's tuning, because I have to wonder... if the orchestra tunes to 442 and I walk into the audition playing at 440, what happens? Is there someone back there zealously hovering over a tuner? Is that why I don't advance?⁵ Can someone find me two recordings, of the same piece and the same group, in which one is played at 440 and the other at, say, 444 or something? Because I'd love to listen to both, just to see if I could discern a difference.⁶ To make things more complicated, there are also things like this floating around.⁷

5. The math doesn't help. Yes, it's good to know the tendencies. Major 3rds go down, minor 3rds go up, the F partial is naturally sharp, blah blah blah. But it doesn't help me to know that a major 3rd is exactly 14 cents flatter than equal temperament, because I haven't a clue how to translate that into something of practical use. I play trombone, and intelligence was not in the job description. Are there people out there who can say "oh, of course, 14 cents" and then they are magically in tune? And if so can I meet them?

6. Melodic vs. harmonic intonation. I am so not discussing this. At all.

I've probably missed a few. Intonation is rocky territory, after all. It causes fights, and occasionally bitter, bitter rivalries.⁸

What does this mean for me, then? It means that if the group that I am playing with sounds out of tune, I assume it is me and attempt to change it. It is ultimately futile, and we stay out of tune. And if we sound in tune... then, well, I obviously can't trust my ears, because what are the chances that we actually are in tune? Clearly I am still out of tune, except now I can't tell because my ears aren't developed enough.

I will forever be insecure about my intonation. As far as I can tell, this is encouraged by music teachers in order to avoid complacency. I am wholly sympathetic to their reasoning, and have been known to encourage it myself, but I have yet to figure out how to deal with the side effects.

So what do I do? I listen and adjust as best I can. I practice scales. I have a drone CD. I have a tuner. Occasionally I remember to record myself, even though I have yet to hear anything helpful on my crappy $20 tape recorder.⁹ I try to find recordings that exemplify good intonation, although my inability to trust my own ears makes it hard to identify such.

I am trying to train my ears. I don't know how long it'll take before I believe what they tell me. Perhaps I never really will. Perhaps that's how it ought to be.

1. By 'interesting' I don't actually mean interesting. I actually mean 'something that I can ramble about for a bit,' and so the rest of you get to suffer.[↩]


2. It is a simple fact that if the group is out of tune and someone insists that they are, in fact, in tune, that they assuredly are not. There are no exceptions to this.[↩]


3. I criticize because I love.[↩]


4. Some other time, perhaps, I will talk about my Solti/Chicago recording of Mahler 3 and my Crisis of Faith... but not today.[↩]


5. Answer: no.[↩]


6. Most of this is irrelevant, because as mentioned earlier none of the groups I play with ever stay with the tuning that they start with. Most don't even start at the same place, much to the chagrin of the principal oboist.[↩]


7. People send me these things, I swear. I don't go looking for them.[↩]


8. There are stories I could tell, but they would require me to name names, and so I shan't.[↩]


9. It helps me to spot rhythm and time discrepancies, but it tells me almost nothing about pitch. Or I just suck at listening. Yeah, that's probably it.[↩]