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How PURE is your orchestra’s intonation?

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Yamaha HD-300 Harmony Director Instructional Keyboard
Yamaha HD-300 Harmony Director Instructional Keyboard
  • 61-key Instructional Keyboard with FM AWM Tone Generats
  • Recding Function Sound Back Time Shift
  • iOS Companion App with Remote Control
  • Rhythm Styles
  • LCD Display
$737.99
Buy on Amazon

Text from slides:

Why do ensembles play out of tune?

  • Students play out of tune because the teacher allows it!
  • Students play out of tune because they don’t have the aural skills to know what is correct 
  • Students often play out of tune because of technical deficiencies (posture, hand position)
  • Students have poor tone.  You can’t tune a bad tone.  
  • “IN-TONE-ATION”

Why do we need to play in tune?

  • We want to sound good!!
  • Even a non-musician can still discriminate an out of tune performance!
  • Establish a strong value for in tune playing
    • “A moral premise” – Michael Alexander

Teaching good intonation…

  • You CAN do this!!
  • Takes planning, practice, and a lot of patience
  • Set your standards high and don’t accept anything but the very best from your students
  • The reward from your hard work is BEAUTY!

Prerequisites for good intonation

  • Aural training
  • Good technique
    • Posture, Hand position, Embouchure, etc.
    • Bad intonation is almost always a sign of poor technique.
  • Good tone
  • Good equipment

Developing Aural Skills

  • Students should be able to audiate/internalize a pitch before they can play it in tune
  • Spend some time each day working on aural skills. 5-10 minutes tops. Consider it an investment of your time!
    • Singing, playing echoes, pitch matching games

Strategies for developing aural skills

  • Match 4 note pitch pattens.  Start simple, work your way to more difficult
  • Play scales and other exercises with sustained drones
  • Have students play major melodies from their literature by ear
  • Break down pieces into chords, and have students repeat the chord progressions
  • Practice with accompaniments, piano or otherwise

Degrees of intonation

  • In tune
  • Very close (1-2 cents off)
  • Out of tune
  • Way out of tune
  • Remember:
    • A little out of tune is still out of tune!
    • It only takes one person playing out of tune to make the entire section/ensemble sound bad!

“Cross Tuning” the Orchestra

  • Use after tuning individual strings
  • Helps students understand P5 tuning
  • Allows more time for students to tune 
  • Allows for harmonic tuning – can be more helpful for a lot of students!
  • Locks in tuning across the orchestra

Popular Tuning Systems

  • Equal Temperament
    • All intervals within an octave divided equally
  • Just Tuning (or Pure tuning)
    • Based on the overtone series, uses whole number intervallic ratios (3:5, 2:1, etc.)
  • Pythagorean tuning
    • Everything based on 3:2 ratio, raised 3rds and 7ths

Thinking “Vertically”

  • Must instill a “vertical” mindset in students.
    • Rhythmic alignment
    • Harmonic alignment
  • “Horizontal” intonation comes more naturally to students

Tuning Systems – When to use?

  • Equal Temperament
    • When playing sustained notes/melodies with a piano/keyboard
  • Just Tuning (or Pure tuning)
    • When tuning chords
  • Pythagorean tuning
    • When playing single line melodies, scales, and arpeggios.  Used most of the time.

Equal Temperament

  • Equal Temperament (ET) approximates just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into equal steps.
    • ET is a sacrifice to allow keyboard instruments to be more versatile
  • Our ears have become desensitized due to training with ET
  • ET dominates and is heard in almost all popular music

Just Tuning vs. Equal Temperament

Just tuning uses whole number interval ratios that are relative to the overtone series, as nature intended.

Adjustments from ET to Pure Intonation

Cautions on using visual tuners…

  • Students become visually tethered to a tuner and don’t learn how to use their ears
  • Tuners don’t adjust to different tuning systems and only tune using Equal Temperament
  • Tuners can be a fabulous teaching tool to develop an aural image 
  • Tuners also help student to physically manipulate pitch with fine tuners and/or pegs

Introducing the Yamaha Harmony Director

  • Yamaha HD-300 Harmony Director
  • Will play in Equal Temperament and Just Intonation
  • Manual or Auto modes when in Just Intonation
  • A unique tool and very practical 
  • Extremely customizable!
  • Helps train the ears, not the eyes!
Yamaha HD-300 Harmony Director Instructional Keyboard
Yamaha HD-300 Harmony Director Instructional Keyboard
  • 61-key Instructional Keyboard with FM AWM Tone Generats
  • Recding Function Sound Back Time Shift
  • iOS Companion App with Remote Control
  • Rhythm Styles
  • LCD Display
$737.99
Buy on Amazon

About the Harmony Director

  • Harmony training, rhythm training, and ensemble timing together in one device. 
  • Enables clear demonstration of pure temperaments
  • Emulates real instruments (with necessary overtones) 
  • Students hear individual notes within chords, so that entire chords may be tuned.
  • Allows manipulation of pitch and volume parameters of each note

Demonstration of  the Yamaha HD-300 Harmony Director

Voice Section

  • 10 Sounds: Flute, oboe, clarinet, sax, organ, trumpet, horn brass, strings
  • Sounds can be “shaped” with setting for attack, release, and brilliance.
  • Sounds can be sustained with a pedal or the “hold” button
  • Octaves can be adjusted to increase or decrease the range

Harmony Section

  • Voices can be transposed with a click of a button.  
  • WONDERFUL when working with full orchestra (unless you a master of transposing on the fly)
  • Hit a button and you are playing in transposed B-flat, E-flat, or F!

Effect of Timbre on Tuning

  • Does timbre (tone color) impact the ability to tune accurately?
  • Experiment with different timbres in your classroom
  • Greer (1969) found that brass players tuned more accurately with like-timbre instruments.  He found that timbres that lacked overtones (like an oscillator) posed problems with accurate tuning

A Balanced Major Chord

(Opinions vary)

  • In addition to tuning, balance is important!
  • 50% – tonic
    • (35% – lower tonic, 15% – higher tonic)
  • 15% – 3rd (color chord)
  • 35% – 5th

Teaching Intervals

  • Teach by ear, and if time, on the page
  • “Interval of the week” idea
  • Ask students to identify intervals within their music
    • Especially helpful with notes in higher positions
  • When students begin thinking of their parts as intervals, it helps with intonation, fingering choices, etc.

Examples of Intonation Adjustments from the repertoire.

See PDF at the top of this page for musical examples…

Tuning Apps

References