This is a quoat for a post by keylessflute from the topic on self taught folk musicians. :-
Training of your ears wouldn’t be a bad idea. If you happen to have a keyboard or a piano at home, play notes with the right hand and try to hit the exact tone on the flute. Of course, this would only work with G, A, B, C, C#. If you happen to have a few bucks to spend, you may get some tuning forks instead, they’re available in every single pitch, not only in A. Cheaper still, and more effective, too, would be to practice this exercises together with a fiddle player, if there’s a willing one around.
It is the last bid I’m not sure about.
I guess keyless is taking about the need to be able to continually monitor the tuning of the flute,due to all the things that will lower or raise it pitch, or is it something else they mean?
One wonders if he imagines that the fiddler plays with good intonation, or poor, or how someone would know the difference, if he needs help in his own playing…
In any case, another tool for someone who wants to do this is any chromatic tuner app with a pitch generator. Most of them have one; some can be set to tuning systems other than ET.
I was going to say the same thing about a tone generator.
Another bit of ear training is to practice thirds and fifths – have the tone play a D, you play an F# or an A and try to get the interval right. If you get them right, these will be perfect intervals rather than equal-tempered.
That’s right Sorry if I expressed the thought inaccurate.
Oops, yes, I thought of a fiddler with good intonation. But that’s an interesting thought - if it’s about adjusting its own tone to a reference tone, it might even work if the reference tone is not accurate according to classical standards, as long as the flute player hits the tone. By the way, I remember a talk about a strange note sometimes used, an f between f nat and f sharp - not well-tempered, but from the harmonic series (I hope I got the expressions right!) As far as I can remember, it seemed to be a tone sometimes used by older players … and I think I heard Paddy Ryan use it on a recording on the sampler The Mountain Road.
I tried to adjust my tone to a thing like that as well as to a fiddle player playing a single note and found the latter more challenging. Why, I do not know.
But, after all, I guess it’s not important how exactly to practice intonation, but to practice intonation at all
I suppose there are two different skill one could work on learning. The first would be matching some other instrument that might, or might not really be in tune, while the other would be learning to play in tune without any external reference.
You would probably expect a good fiddler to play the way they play (some fiddlers play out of tune) consistently. They might hold their pitch and expect you to match it. Beginning fiddlers might be inclined to try to match the pitch of the fiddler. In that case you could end up with the two of them meeting some place off the charts.
In studies of beginning violin students, they found that the best way for them to learn intonation was to have their teacher tell them, (e.g) “stop. That’s too flat. play it higher. higher. good!” Interesting.
Sorry if I expressed the thought inaccurate.