Intonation: Part 1 || Playing Your Saxophone In Tune

or tips on how to practice playing your saxophone in tune watch this video all the way to the end nobody can argue that having great pitch is crucial for playing your instrument at the highest level for this purpose I find it very important to work on my pitch and intonation every single day now Before we jump in I wanted to first share with you three things that we have to have an understanding of for this to work number one there are no saxophones currently on the market that play in tune all by themselves all saxophones even the best ones are built out of tune granted some saxophones are built with more precision than the others but there are no saxophones that by themselves play in tune number two when we tuned to our concert a or our concert b-flat the only thing that that means is that your concert a or concert b-flat are in tune at that given moment the rest of the notes on the horn still need to be adjusted our tuning note merely acts as an important pitch that is a relatively centered starting point so with that said we have to understand that there is no one place that we can place the mouthpiece on the cork that makes everything else on the saxophone sound in tune number three working on your intonation while only looking at a tuner doesn't better your intonation skills watching a tuner tells you what in tune looks like but we have to understand that intonation is not a visual craft it's an aural skill so what we have to do instead is we have to learn how to train our ears to know in tune sounds like if I roughly measure the length of the tube of my low f-sharp concert a for us alto saxophonist I can get an estimate on how long the horn is for that given pitch you now if I cut that distance in half it should represent the length of an octave above that initial f-sharp so hypothetically if I took this length we should be able to line it up with an octave vent around this point on the tube as you can see on my saxophone it's actually very close what this tells me is that the octaves on my concert a should inherently be pretty close to a true octave now let's try a D or our concert F you here's the length of that ood after cutting the tube in half let's check to see if there's an octave vent around that spot you you can clearly see here that the saxophone vent should be further down on the instrument in order for the D to be in tune with its fundamental in other words the lengths of the D with the octave key is too short this is why that note is notoriously sharp incorrect links are the case for many notes on the saxophone now granted I know that this explanation was not scientific at all there are many factors such as the size of the tone holes and the opening of each key and the shape of the tube that weren't even discussed but this is merely an explanation and an illustration the show that our instrument is a huge compromise we have to learn how to place notes where they should go and not where they naturally want to come out and this is the mindset that I feel we should adopt when working on our intonation now let's briefly discuss how we can start practicing this there are two things that you'll need one a sound source such as a second tuner or a metronome that can drone a single pitch or the tuning CD and that's a great tool as well into a good and reliable tuner you first I turn on my drone to sound a concert a if you don't have a drone that's very loud just use some headphones and plug it in to your sound source with my tuner on my music stand I proceed to play a concert a and F sharp on the health effects I do this with my eyes closed making sure that I do not look at the two I'm essentially only using my ears to try to match the pitch now once I feel like I'm playing in tune and there are no more waves in the sound while still holding the note I then look at the tuner now if I notice that I'm out of tune on that given note I voiced the pitch either higher or lower so that it looks in tune on the tuner now once it's been adjusted then close my eyes again while holding the note to study what that sounds like I may do that several times before moving to another pitch now notice here I'm using my eyes to train my ears to know what in tune sounds like and this is a very important step now I do these exercises on every single note on the horn so I can fully grasp the tendencies of the full range of the instrument and I also recommend that you do this every single day and the reason why I say that is because from my experience I noticed that the moment I get comfortable or complacent with my pitch and stop practicing it that's the moment that I notice I play out of tune in on a consistent basis now this is only step one in this video series on intonation and the weeks to come I'll be releasing several videos in which we will discuss some topics that I found helpful in my journey to better control and hone in on my pitch we'll discuss such topics like how dynamics might affect your pitch how your read strength may affect your pitch how the weather or temperature might affect your pitch we'll talk about what I call linear context and we'll also talk about how to place your notes in the context of harmony now if you would like immediate updates as I upload new videos in the weeks to come make sure you subscribe to my youtube channel also visit my website at robert young saxophone comm and in the meantime you can watch some of these videos that I've uploaded on this channel that might help you out in the practice

Channel: Robert Young

Views: 37,958

Keywords: saxophone, intonation, robert young, timothy mcallister, uncsa, creston sonata, selmer saxophones, ishimori, daddario woodwinds, double tongue, claude delangle, robert young saxophone, in tune, tuning

Id: ND9KwIDPLC0

Length: 7min 53sec (473 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 27 2017