Helping Musicians with a bad [or no] Sense of Intonation
A lot of educators really struggle with training students’ ears to be able to hear intonation problems. There are many reasons why someone will play horribly out-of-tune, but the underlying problem that I believe almost never gets fixed (by teachers and students alike) is training someone’s ears to be able to actually hear said intonation problems. There are absolutely other causes; for wind instruments, not being good at lip bends is a very common reason, but I want to focus on the issue of a musician not being able to hear bad intonation at all or is incredibly insensitive to it.
Just to be clear, there are many people who are completely aware of this problem and try to fix it, but I have yet to see a widespread method that I believe is actually effective. Many people’s ears naturally get better with time, and certain methods that I believe to be ineffective are mistakenly given credit for improvement seen in musicians of all stripes. For instance, I don’t think visual tuners help at all with training someone’s ears, and I’m of the belief that they are a net negative if they’re used to train someone’s ears. I also don’t believe that having a student with bad intonation sit next to a student with good intonation is going to help the bad student; I think the good player just ends up getting really annoyed. I don’t believe that doing lip bends on your own is going to help, and I don’t believe that doing long tones with a drone is going to help.
How to Fix this Issue
I would like to think that I came up with this on my own, but I’m not sure if I stole it from someone and just forgot who. What I’ll do with students is I’ll have them hold out a note, then I’ll hold out the same note with them, making sure I’m matching their intonation regardless of if they’re super flat or sharp. I’ll bend the note out-of-tune (relatively slow), and then bend it back in tune with them. I’ll repeat that 3 more times, and the last 2 times I’ll bend it up instead. Then redo the entire process, but switch roles with the student. To lay that out more clearly:
Have the student hold out a note.
Play the same note with them, matching their intonation.
Bend the note down, and then back up (the student should hold the note out without bending).
Rinse and repeat 3 more times, with the last 2 times bending it up instead of down.
The student and teacher should switch roles, with the teacher playing the notes first and the student attempting to do the lip bends.
This is something that a student can do on their own while playing with a drone, but I believe that doing it with a teacher is better since you can make sure they’re actually starting in tune; many people will play with a drone without realizing how out of tune they are. I believe this works because you’re taking a musician and “holding their hand” through the different stages of intonation. By bending the pitch slowly against their consistent long tone, they will hear each “phase” of intonation (in-tune, slightly out-of-tune, significantly out-of-tune, etc.).
Feel free to do this with different notes/intervals as well. I will regularly do this with octaves, Major 3rds, even different instruments so those who I’m teaching can train their ears to hear intonation in different scenarios. I’ve even tried doing this in sectionals where I’ll have the entire section hold out a note (or a chord), and have one person bend down and then back up, and have it be a different person each time. The possibilities with this are endless, but here’s a brief list for inspirational purposes.
Do this with a 2 octave gap
If you’re doing this with 4 people, have 2 people bend the pitch, but go in opposite directions (I haven’t tried this, yet)
When having multiple people bend the pitch, change the pairings/groupings so it’s not the same people bending with each other every time
Have several different instruments play together when doing this
Using this method during sectionals was a relatively new idea I had in the past year, and I want to see a lot more people try this and see if it helps with section intonation. I briefly used this for some of the trumpet sections at Mission Hills High School, and I managed to get 4 high school trumpet players to hold a top-of-the-staff G in tune, so I’m going to try and use it a lot more frequently in my teaching. I’ve used it a lot in private lessons, but I need to utilize it more in sectionals.
If you would like a quick, audio-only demonstration of the exercise, here’s a link to a YouTube video of me doing this with a student: https://youtu.be/kI5k_TT8zgs
