I’m very frustrated. I think I’m a good flute player of Irish music, then I learn from others that I’m playing out of tune. I didn’t take up music until I was in my late 20s. I don’t think I’m tone deaf, but tone challenged. Here’s a couple of things on the topic I found on the internet:
Kevin Sinclair: It is imperative that you have confidence in yourself and your abilities to hold a tune, in order to overcome your tone deafness.
Wikipedia:(singing or playing out of tune) is most often caused by lack of musical training or education and not actual tone deafness.
So, what might be a good way to learn to hear and translate pitch correctly?
Some possible ideas:
Practice playing chords with a guitar.
Take voice lessons.
Play tunes along with a drone note from a tuner.
Practice tuning a guitar without a tuner.
Learn more tunes by ear.
First off, I apologize if my early comments when you posted a clip have been causing you frustration. In terms of playing in tune though, I think you’ve laid out a couple of good ideas. One is playing your flute against a set pitch/drone. You can also play long tones against a tuner and watch how changes in your embouchure affect how you go sharp or flat.
That said, what I hear when I listen to your clips is that your embouchure gets less focused on the higher notes. The reason that it is going slightly out of tune (bear in mind this is all relative) is because you are overcompensating with additional air for the fact that your embouchure isn’t as tight and focused as you would want it to be up high. In part, the out of tune-ness is based on the fact that you are getting a wider range of tone and overtones on those notes. In my opinion, you are going to get better results focusing on ways to strengthen and focus your embouchure as opposed to doing ear training, voice lessons, etc.
try playing along with professional recordings, lunasa as an example, you might also want to record yourself playing alongside the professional recording and then listen for pitch discrepancy.
Flute players playing on their own tend to deceive their own hearing and develop bad blowing habits..this exercise will keep you honest!
Michael, all of the suggestions so far are good ones, including your own. I agree with Brendan that getting control of your focus in the high octave will help things up there; this is something that we all need to work on as it is a real bugaboo of flute playing in general.
I’d start with an even larger generality, and say that what’s going to take you to the next level with the pitch issue and other related issues is to work on what I like to call consistency. I spend lots of time with my students on this concept, which basically has to do with making sure you are in control of all the little variables that go into producing your tone, which is really inseparable from the pitch issue. You have to start with being aware of the physical aspects of your instrument, by which I mean things like alignment of the finger holes, optimal tuning slide setting when the flute is cold or warmed up, and alignment of the headjoint to ensure ample range for tone/pitch adjustments, with the embouchure while playing, at A=440.
Next is to become very aware of how you’re interfacing with your instrument, both with your hands and your embouchure. When I say consistency, I mean that you need to have a routine every time you pick up the flute. By being aware of how to set up your flute for optimum performance, and by trying to minimize unintentional variations in your hold/embouchure, you can gain control of all aspects of your tone production, and let me say again that pitch is inextricably tied up with your blow and your tone, as per Brendan’s observations. After you’ve gained control of the variables, you can employ a practice strategy to improve your pitch, like playing against a drone or with a recording, and expect to get reproduceable positive results. Cheers,
I just played a few tunes with a customer Suson Reid from Vermont (two feet of snow) who’d happened to bring her fiddle with her today. Of course, I had intonation on the brain. We played for maybe 10 or 15 minutes. A couple of tunes she started. A couple I started. So, like the forum geek I am, I record the last set: Maid Behind the Bar/The Banshee. Listening to it, I could tell:
1)I was nervous
2)My intonation was off because of the nervousness
3)I need to play music with more musicians
Here’s a little snippet of the impromptu session at From the Ground Up: Maid behind the Bar
Playing long tones with a tuner would definitely help. Learn which notes on your flute have a tendency to be out of tune (no flute’s perfect). Play tunes slowly paying attention to the tuner, and eventually the adjustments you make to keep notes in tune will be natural. As you do this your ‘ear’ for intonation will also develop. It’s not something that’s going to happen over night, but is definitely something that you can practice and will help you improve. good luck!
I’m no expert and don’t claim to be able to play always in tune, but when I’m playing at the session I listen to myself and if I’m out of tune I try to fix it.
That’s about the best I can do, though. Alone there’s no reference point so it usually goes unnoticed by me.
How about trying the tune you know well in a different scale, by ear. Probably more to with relative rather than absolute pitch but good ear training anyway.
Do you play any other instruments? I play a little box and more recently concertina. Carrying tunes I’ve learnt on flute and transferring by ear, I’m sometimes surprised when I play, say a C# on the concertina 'cos I think that’s what I played on the flute to immediatedly know it’s wrong and should be Cnat etc.
Assuming the box or concertina is reasonably in tune, that may help when working back the other way as your brain will have a reference sound if that makes sense.
This thread is very similar to Diane’s thread about nervousness. You’ve already figured out that you need to play with others more often, play out more often, be nervous more often and, by being so, learn to relax and hold your flute/embouchure consistently, regardless. By yourself, even though your techniques and overall skill might improve, you’ll not make that jump.
since no one has mentioned this I thought I would. Why not try and record yourself as a duet? I don’t think this will help you if you are out of tune with yourself, but it will help you listening note for note, and that in turn will assist you with respect to playing with other melody players. I don’t know, perhaps it will help with the ‘in tuneness’ of your own playing.
I played along with myself on the tune castlebar races, and it’s interesting…aside from the obvious timing issues, and phrasing, and ornaments, I could tell the notes where I blew too hard, or rolled in somewhat, or changed my embrochure…
Try it and see if it helps.
Arbo
What notes where you blew too hard, rolled in somewhat etc? In another thread I mentioned some software called Tartini http://miracle.otago.ac.nz/postgrads/tartini/ which lets you look at tuning, volume, of individual tracks, notate a recording etc. etc. It also lets you see if someone has recorded a tune and then recorded it again while playing along with it or just recorded it once then doubled it using software.
Well, I definitely recorded two tracks. I am not sure what you’re implying. I think there were a couple of spots where I either rolled in, used too much air, lost my embrochure, or whatever… that is to say, aside from the spots where I was just plain out of time. Is that program some kind of tune lie detector?
Arbo
Tartini is indeed a tune lie detector. It will tell you the actual pitch and volume played at all points in a tune, display the results graphically etc. In the case of the tune you recorded somehow the two channels are identical.
Perhaps because it was recorded as two mono tracks? If you listen carefully you will hear where the notes are off just a bit. You can also hear where one track ended on the high ‘G’ just before the other one.
Arbo
OK. Left and right are identical. I’ve checked this with 3 different software programs. So what did you do? Record it twice, combine the two tracks into one mono track then split it back into two tracks (stereo) again?
I recorded two tracks with garage band. Both in mono. I then saved the file to disk (it saves as an m4a). I used a program called switch to convert it to an mp3. From there I uploaded to box.net. That’s it.
Arbo
