Recently I was playing with an electric tuner and found some unexpected results. I tuned my Sindt D whistle on the A note. This went fine. But then, I go play the D, G and other notes and they are not in tune. Could there be something wrong with the whistle?
I also noticed that changing my breath and embroucher can significantly change the pitch of the note being played. I guess I always knew this but never paid this close attention. I’m at the point in my playing where I can learn tunes fairly quickly and play at good speed. Now I’m wondering what I can introduce into my practice that will help me play notes at proper pitch. Any ideas?
A musicians greatest tool is his pair of ears. Learn to use them. I said before: a whistle is not an instrument that plays at a set pitch at the push of a button. There’s effort involved getting things right. In fairness do you ever imagine this question on a fiddle forum ‘I just played this Strad and the scale I played was out!’ It’s not really that different for the whistle.
I think with a Sindt you can rest assured it’s not the whistle that’s throwing things off.
On the other hand glutton for punishment that I am, I listened to a soundclip of a whistle advertised here last week. It was on the maker’s website. The whistle was played with very very poor intonation, another maker who’s whistle I wouldn’t be buying. Sonny Brogan’s mazurka was the tune, not to target the maker but just to avoid confusion.
(I know pet peeves and all but if the maker can’t play it in tune, how can we be sure anyone else can?)
Ditto what Peter said. And the fact that you’re now aware of the issue means that you’re on your way to acquiring good intonation habits.
Here’s an exercise you can try, assuming your tuner is chromatic and auto-responding. Choose a favorite tune and play it slowly with the tuner in front of you. Every now and then pause on a note and hold (sustain) it while checking the tuner readout for pitch. Use your breath and embouchure to adjust the note so that it’s on target, listening carefully to get the pitch “in your ear”. Then continue on, repeating the procedure. Do this for 5 or 10 minutes to lock in your sense of how your whistle behaves across the range of the tune. Then play the tune up to speed again. You might find that your overall intonation is now more accurate and natural.
For a more high-tech approach, there are vocal pitch trainers (software) available that can monitor your playing and give you a continuous graphical readout of your playing relative to the target pitches. But it’s the same idea.
Honestly, when you’re playing most dance tunes at speed, micro pitch precision is not critical. If your whistle is reasonably in tune and you develop good ear and breath habits, “good enough” intonation can become second nature.
It´s a well known fact that most wind instruments are “blown into pitch”. Som more than others. But this is especially true for most kinds of flutes and brass instruments. On a recorder or a whistle one can change pitch quite considerably. (typically ± 20 cents)
If you are a little of, compaired to the electronic tuner, it´s no big deal. In an actual musical situation the latitudes are quite high (in a rowdy ipub for instance…) A variation of, lets say, ± 10 cents is so little that most people won´t notice, and is nothing to worrie about! The best advice is to just play on and trust and develope your musical ear.
Electronic tuners are not always true! When one is tuning a piano, a piano tuner is “streching the octaves”. That means that, in order to make very high notes sound IN tune, one actually must tune them a little higher OUT of tune. The same goes for very low notes. They must be tuned a little lower than the meter actually says! An experienced (concert) flute player is therefore often pushing very high notes (in the third octave) just a little. An electronic tuner would say that he is OUT of tune and the ear that his is IN tune. The reason for this has to do with the brains perception and cognition of music and sound. (try to read more on Wikipedia about this interesting phenomenon!)
