Deep tuning
This post is intended mostly for wind and string players and vocalists, who have to adjust their intonation in real time. If that’s not you- pianists, here is a great interview of Keith Jarrett by Ethan Iverson. Guitarists, here’s a great listening session with Pat Metheny. Bassists, here is a talk the amazing Charlie Haden gave in 1999. Drummers, here Iverson talks to the legendary Billy Hart. Okay, if you’re still here, here we go.
A couple of years ago, I was listening to a podcast with amazing trumpeter Ingrid Jensen. She started talking about practicing with a shruti box, a device that mimics the drone of a tanpura in Indian classical music, and how she uses it. I’ll let her talk:
(Ingrid expands on this in a couple of other videos, which I heartily recommend. They are more brass specific.)
I want to zone in on something she said (I’m paraphrasing)- intonation only exists in context. Unless you only play with a piano or guitar, most of the situations you’ll play or sing in, what it means for a Bb to be in tune is going to change if your Bb is the root of the chord, or the third, or the seventh. So it only makes sense to work on playing in tune in context. (See the end of this post for a deeper dive into this)
Since I heard Ingrid talk about working with a shruti box*, and saw this video, I’ve played with how to adapt this idea to my own practice. Here’s what I’ve come up with- it’s a different structure than hers, but it really works for me:
I’ll set the drone on concert A. (my F#, concert A is the most in tune note of the saxophone. Initially, I’d recommend A or E for wind players, Bb for brass players, and vocalists, something that is in the center of your range)
pick a chord where your note (I’ll use A, you use what works best for you) is one of the chord tones. Since I’m picking A, let’s go with A Major Triad
Play an A as a long tone- medium volume, hold it as long as you can. Find a place where your pitch, your sound, really sits comfortably in the middle of the drone. Wind players, this may mean you need to pull out or push in, that’s fine. Hold the note for as long as you can.
Then, move one note up or down the chord, an E or a C#. Again, hold the note, trying to find the place where your sound “fits” against the drone. Hold the note for as long as you can.
Keep doing this across the comfortable range of your instrument. (Brass players, don’t try to use this to extend your range! there are other good exercises for this)
As you start to gain proficiency here, change the chord. For instance, keep the drone on an A, but make the A the third of the chord instead of the root. (F Major triad, or F# minor triad), or the fifth (D Major, D minor, D# diminished) If this becomes easy, you can start to work with alterations or upper structures- but that’s a different post.
One other advantage of this exercise is it helps you get to that “single point” of awareness that I’ve been emphasizing in other posts. This can actually be a very relaxing, meditative exercise- you are trying to drop into a single sound. As you will do it, you should notice that your sound will “slot in” to the larger sonic universe the drone creates, as Ingrid talks about.
Try both, try other things, and see what works for you.
Appendix 1: Resources
So if you’ve gotten this far, hopefully you’re thinking “how do I get a drone?” I’m glad you asked- there are a few options:
I use is a program called ITablaPro, on IPad. According to my friends in the Indian classical world, it’s the only really good program of its kind. There is a desktop version, and a version for IOs. It’s pricy for an app ($20-30 for mobile devices, $80 for desktop), but the sound is amazing and it’s very powerful. I’ll go into some the other rhythmic things you can use it for some other time. There are some other free apps that are just OK- I have Tampura Droid and Shruti Box for Android, which I use if I don’t have my IPad.
Of course, there are drones on Youtube. Here is an A drone that is good. That channel actually has all twelve pitches as drones, which is great. Here is a good C drone that is closer to a harmonium (another Indian instrument, often used in kirtan- chanting).
You could buy a shruti box like Ingrid’s on Ebay or other sites. They run in the $60-70 USD range.
Appendix 2: Why tuning is hitting a moving target. (nerdy)
In Western music we divide the octave into twelve equal parts, the chromatic scale. This is, in some key ways, not natural. All sound has a fundamental pitch, and then a series of “overtones”, first an octave, then a fifth above that, etc. (The timbre of a sound- what makes a clarinet sound different from an oboe when they play the same note- is largely determined by which overtones an instrument emphasizes.)
If you learn the overtone series as a musician, you typically see it presented like this (source):
However, this is an approximation. In reality, whats really happening is this (with the +/- and numbers representing the distance in cents from the pitch pictured):
(source, which gets into some crazy detail and what ifs)
Why does this matter? Look at the first two appearances on the note E, a major third above the fundamental C. They are both almost 15 cents flat. The flat (dominant) seventh, Bb, is so flat, 31 cents, it’s almost an A natural.
So? Even though we grew up in an equal tempered system, our bodies, products of the natural world, relate the music we hear to this overtone series, which is not “in tune” in the same way a good piano is in tune. So if three trumpets played a C Major chord, and each of them were lining up perfectly to a tuner, the chord would sound out of tune! Our ears want to hear that E a little bit flat, because that’s how it occurs in the overtone series. Other chord tones have other tendencies. It may seem crazy, but nature don’t lie. (Why do we buy it on a piano? I’m not 100% sure why, but we do. In a band or a string quartet or a chorus, though, we don’t.)
This is the advantage of practicing with a drone- you are working on intonation in a real context, with real overtones, not just with a line on a tuner. And you are immersing yourself in real sounds like you would have in a jazz band or a chorus or an orchestra.
If you want more information on this issue (often talked about in terms of “just” vs. “equal” temperament), there are many rabbitholes to go down. A fun one is this interview with boy genius Jacob Collier, where he talks about how he manipulates pitch in his music to get particular effects. The whole thing is amazing, but he starts talking about tuning- the interviewer calls it microtones- start at 10:20.)