Hey folks.
I’ve played whistle ten weeks now, and I can play some tunes now without fingering mistakes at full speed.
But I think my intonation is a problem, and I want to practice that. At the moment, my airflow is pretty constant, and doesn’t vary. When I listen to my own recordings it just doesn’t sound right, at least not in slower tunes where intonation is a bigger factor.
So, how should I practice intonation? Sit beside a tuner and play one note at a time? Or should I use a program to check my intonation AFTER I’ve played?
And by the way, isn’t it hard to have an okay intonation, when every whistle needs different airflow? Seems hard enough to play decently with ONE whistle, let alone when there are hundreds of variations out there…
Hej!
When I first got started on whistles my main source of ITM was abc-files that I played on my computer. Seemed like a good and easy way to learn tunes, but when I met up with some others at a session they pointed out that I sounded like a living midi recording
So get a bunch of good CD’s, listen, listen, listen and play along.
Thanks for your answer, but what has that got to do with intonation?
As far as I know, midi has perfect intonation.
But regarding listening and playing along, it sounds like a good idea. But still, I don’t think my ears alone suffice to tell me if I have the right intonation or not.
Yes it’s true that simply doing a lot of playing along with other musicians who play well in tune (whether live or on recordings) will help your intonation. If you have a good ear you’ll automatically blow the notes of your whistle into tune.
Or, as suggested above, you can play along with a computer program which of course will play each note exactly in tune.
Now, each whistle is a bit different, even whistles from the same maker. So the blowing approach which allows you to blow one whistle into tune won’t work with another.
I’ve been playing whistle a long time and over the years I’ve done tweaking/carving on just about all of my whistles so that they have a consistent scale, the object being to be able to pick up any of my whistles in any key and play in tune without having to think about how to adjust to the particular scale of each.
Another thing to do is to play slow tunes, or scales, octaves, and arpeggios, while looking at the needle of an electronic tuner. This will inform you very clearly where your whistle is out of tune. You can then either learn to compensate by tailoring your blowing to that whistle’s scale, or you can get out a Dremel and tune the whistle.
That may be the reason it sounds like midi and not a whistle
Try to tune a piano key by key to perfect pitch, it sounds awful when you play it.
Playing along with others, live or with a CD, will after a while give you the ability to compensate and fit
the way you play with the tune you listen to.
Try running a recorded clip through flutini (free software) which will check the intonation for you. A tuner is ok, but it’s easy to pull notes into tune when playing one note at a time.
There’s a healthy debate as to whether some cheap whistles have correct intonation, so you could go down the line of blaming the whistle, but I suspect that if slow airs are giving you problems then perhaps it’s your breath control that needs improving.
Otherwise, get someone to cough whenever you play a duff note. That’ll hide any mistakes.
I don’t think of good intonation on the whistle/flute as hitting the perfect pitch for every note, but rather getting the best sound out of each note on that instrument. Obviously attention needs to be paid to the intervals you are playing so that your scales are not sounding like something out of the East but playing folk music should not sound like a midi file with each note perfect. Playing to a tuner is okay for giving you an idea of where your whistle is but you’d do much better playing along with other (good) musicians or recordings and training your ears.
It seems that most whistlers are not familiar with the RTTA. It’s gotten a lot of attention on the flute board, but I’ve only seen one mention of it (or Flutini) here.
It’s a software which checks your tuning as you play and give you the results when you’re done. Better than a tuner for this purpouse.
Have a look here http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/RTTA.htm
Other than that, playing along with recordings is acctually a great idea. If you have a good enough ear to tell that your scale is off when playing slow airs, it will be even easier to tell when playing along with others. You will probably even start to hear if you are sharp or flat, or at least you will after having done a lot of adjustments up and down.
And of course, the last advice is the one I give to anyone complaining about tuning: Drink more
whisky
You can try the online Virtual Session at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/r2music/folk/sessions/ and play along. This has been a good learning tool in many respects for new players, especially if you can read music.
Many nice advice in this thread, thanks.
I’ll use my ear more when I play (to) tunes and use RTTA, then. I understand that one doesn’t need to have a perfect intonation, and that it may even sound bad. My intonation is way too crappy though.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the required airflow for the “right” tone is most sensitive from first octave D up to second octave D. I find that the higher notes are always on-spot as long as I have enough airflow to produce them, that is, they stay at the same intonation even if I blow harder. But that may be my Blackbirds awesomeness rather than my own playing…
Might beg to differ, given that the MIDI or digital tuning software isn’t going to be 100% certain what scale/mode or county your playing in. It’s a human thing and a bit fuzzy round the edges sometimes. Playing along with others, definitely good… although there’s a few idiosyncratically tuned recodings out there. Tuning sofware, good for getting a measure of your weaknesses and picking out your recurrent habits I guess. The more you play, and listen, the more you start to really hear where ‘that c’ doesn’t work and where it does (I can think of tunes where I might want one of them going up and the other coming down). Hadn’t thought about Peter’s idea of playing with drone, piper’s solution, educational for hearing intervals, might try that… now whatever happended to those v-pipes when you finally find a use for them
Why is that people think that midi or an electronic tuner are ‘perfectly’ in tune??? I tend to think of it as being perfectly out of tune!
Playing against a drone is (as Peter suggested) a very good way to go as you tune the note you are playing against/with the drone which is what matters.
Which note for the drone?
Well that depends on what you are playing (ie the key or mode you are playing in). The tuning of the note you are playing will depend on the drone note, which is why playing against a drone is good. Try playing notes against all kinds of drones.
The ability of playing a note by a tuner is in many ways far more useful to learning to play in tune than telling you for example that an F# is 10 cents flat of an equal tempered F#.
A couple examples:
A just tuned major third is about 16 cents flat of an equal tempered third.
Even though equal and just fifths are only 2 cents apart a violin or cello is noticeably tuned different if you use a tuner rather than a good ear
To put it another way a note’s pitch depends on its context and is NOT constant.
And of course it also depends on your fellow musicians!
also just playing/listening alot helps, as you get more familiar with your instrument, and whats its supposed to sound like, you start to automatically tune it yourself, as much as you can.
Highwood: That’s interesting. Are you saying I should stay away from Flutini then too, and just use drone note?
Concerning the drone, aka the tonic note, I don’t know how to find it?
Is it the note that one can play before the tune starts. Like a “kick-off” note?
For example, the D note in the beginning here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkoM8aDCUv8 ?
In fact, equal temperament is “perfectly in tune”. It’s simply a different tuning standard (of which there are many) from just intonation. Perceived dissonance is largely a function of acclimation.
Here are some practical considerations for the whistle player:
In session music, the subtle differences between equal and just tuning are likely to be drowned out by the cacophony of instruments and pub din.
When two or more musicians play together, playing to a common tuning standard is more important than the actual tuning standard chosen.
The problem of the whistle is not so much that it’s optimized for just or equal temperament but rather that many whistles go flat in the upper range, have flat c# and/or sharp cnat, and have dubious bottom and middle D notes. Recognizing and managing the wonky notes is more important than playing to either just or equal temperament.
