Intonation Lesson
Helen Drewski
Issue of the Week for me is intonation in intermediate students; having inherited several with major intonation problems, I'm finding it difficult to correct. When teaching beginners and elementary students, I teach good intonation as we go, so I know they're aware of what's acceptable and what isn't. However, when you inherit a student you have no idea whether they've ever been taught good intonation, nor indeed whether they've ever been told they don't have it. It seems to me that while the very beginning is an ideal time to tackle the issue (when things are fairly simple and foundations are being laid), I can't see how something as fundamental as intonation can be taught/corrected contructively to an intermediate student in the midst of all the other issues that need addressing at this level. It seems that every week I prescribe s-l-o-w, careful practice, particularly of scales, to these students, and they go away and do precisely nothing about the problem, then try to wing it the following lesson. In some of them, I can see that they're not at all clear about the basic layout of the fingerboard (even first position), so give them fingering charts to study and simple scales, but to no avail. In others, I suspect they have little concept of pitch altogether... Specific instructions to check notes with their open strings are ignored, singing neglected, ditto playing through pieces on the piano... Of course, these students are primarily teenagers and it could be that I'm simply facing a mass teen strop in my studio. But I suspect it's more a case of the student either not bothering or feeling overwhelmed by the problem. I'd appreciate feedback from anyone who's found an effective way to address this problem.
February 21, 2005 at 08:28 AM Ha, I bet this is a universal problem, and I bet all teachers can relate in one way or another. Solutions? No, I don't have any yet. I found something interesting though. I have a particularly tonally handicapped student who, when playing a scale, doesn't seem to notice a half-step discrepancy in his pitch, yet will rattle off a favorite jig or reel in perfect intonation. It seems as though his ear kicks in when he is playing something #1 he takes an interest in, #2 has listened to often, and #3 that is built on simple finger patterns. I'm tempted to take him out of Suzuki book 4 for a while and head down this trail for a while, to stall while he develops a more firm grasp of his whole and half steps without making him feel like he's being taken back a notch. Meanwhile, we continue to discuss finger patterns, tetrachords, key signatures, and other theory as we play loads of scales. I don't know what else to do, except to encourage vocal lessons.
Sue, I have seen that regularly. The first thing to check is if the student can hear in tune in my experience. Then, go from there. There are different possibilities after that depending on what the problems are. If the student cannot hear in tune, then the ear needs to be trained. The first good step is scales (or pattern exercises) against open strings so that the student can learn the resonance of what is in tune and out of tune. That takes a while, but you see wonders even in the first couple of weeks. Also, insisting on slow practice is important, and I find that asking the students to articulate all intermediate notes in slow practice, controlling exactly how their left hand moves from one place to the next also accomplishes wonders. Hope this helps!
So this is why I give a free session. I usually explain what the gaps are and that to continue to go forward, the student will need to go backward for awhile and fill in those gaps. And I generally start a student over.
First, the violin and bow position have to be established and sound production needs to be understood. Then the left hand needs to learn a position that will make intonation more efficient. Then they have to learn how to hear - inside their head and outside their head, so I start with the do-re singing and matching exercise that I posted somewhere. That also more firmly establishes the left hand.
In other words, I teach them the same way I'd teach a beginner. Once they develop those beginning skills they never had, they'll go faster, but until then it is pretty painful to do reprogramming. So I always try to make that process as graphic as possible to give them the best idea I can of what it will be like to do the work (no one really knows what it is like until they start). Then I send them home to think about it and decide if that is what they want to do - or to find another teacher who won't do that.
February 22, 2005 at 05:45 PM One thought I've had which Lisa's words have brought forth again in my mind: motivation. I know as an intermediate I can make all kinds of progress by "deprogramming" old mistakes, fine tuning things, paying attention, etc. etc. etc. But it's not a passive process: no matter how fine the teacher, the student has to be an active component. Much more has to happen at home than in the classroom. After all, given 3 hours of practice that's potentially 18 hours per week vs. 1 hour of lessons. But can any of you fine teachers make a dent unless these students you are writing about WANT to improve in these areas?
February 22, 2005 at 06:21 PM Another vote for "I feel your pain" here! There are at least two students I have who came to me at an uneven intermediate level with whom lessons are spent ENTIRELY on cleaning up passages - or, in extreme cases, individual bars - where intonation is not merely poor but atrocious. In those two cases, all pleas to practice slowly, carefully, comparing each suspect note with open strings, listening for overtones, etc. are either ignored or simply not followed sufficiently. I've actually eavesdropped on their warm-ups, and asked them to practice in front of me in lessons, only to have this suspicion confirmed: they'll play carefully for a couple of notes before abandoning even a pretence of slow and careful work. Moreover, they don't seem to be able to incorporate the main Law of Intonation which I explain to them from the get-go. Namely, that it's not enough to clean up a note - you must be facile and consistent with getting TO the note from its predecessor, and getting FROM the note to its equally in-tune successor.
All students who come to me are put on scales and arpeggios, regardless of level, though what scales are meant to accomplish in each student is mainly determined by their overall setup. For those whose previous teachers left their left and right hand setups in some semi-crippled state, I use scales to "reprogram" those bad physical habits. For those whose hands are well set up (a minority, sadly), I use scales to work on velocity, increased accuracy, and various techniques (e.g. double-stops, bowing techniques like ricochet or spiccato, etc.) as well as on daily maintenance. In most cases of beginners, this results in very clean Suzuki-level playing, though only time will tell if this carries through to post-Suzuki repertoire like Accolay and so forth. In most cases of intermediate students, the main difficulty is in having them ingrain the notion that scales are not some pre-practice ritual but are actually practice itself and that, as such, they should be used more extensively and more efficiently than they had previously been used to.
What I've found that is curious, however, is that my initial hunch from years back is correct: intonation is almost entirely ear-determined. The proof of this was in one of the aforementioned intermediate and technique gap-ridden students' recent lessons. In trying to clean up the passage in thirds and tenths on the second page of the third movement of the Bruch g-moll, no amount of slow work in the lesson seemed to work, whether tuning each interval, shift, or even each NOTE. On a whim, I had the student play the whole tenths run an octave lower than written. We cleaned that for a few minutes, and rapidly achieved a much more in-tune result. Then I had the student play the passage as written once more. Magically, although none of our previous half hour of effort had had any effect, the post-transposition attempt was perfectly in tune. The problem, I was forced to conclude, lay in the student not having heard clearly in his head what the sound of the clean intervals was. Moreover, no amount of in-tune demonstrations on my part had had any effect. It was only when he himself played the thing in tune, albeit in a different register, that he could hear how it should sound.
Thus, perhaps some intonation problems may stem from our being unaccustomed to high-frequency sounds in the fiddle's upper range, even when those notes are compared against open strings. And for students not yet playing outside of first position, perhaps the problem is similarly in not having heard THEMSELVES play in tune enough. Maybe the solution would involve lots of unisons with open strings? And, from there, to octaves? From there to fifths, and only then to thirds and sixths. Thus, have them play lots of 4th finger A vs. open A, 4th finger D vs. open D, etc? Followed by comparing every G, D, A, or E to an open string, regardless of the register of the stopped note?
February 23, 2005 at 12:11 AM Thanks everyone for the thoughtful responses. Lisa, I too have considered a period of remedial work for these students, but they are prone to ignoring my (written) instructions because they're frustrated about being held back - and convince themselves that if their last teacher didn't mention it, it can't be worth mentioning! The time gets wasted this way, and by the time I'm under parental pressure to get them back on the conveyor belt, they're still having trouble.
About poor grasp of position, I agree that it's a serious issue; I have a couple who consistently position their hands somewhere approaching half position. Of course I correct it every time, and have given them the same instructions for checking that I give my beginners, plus the same shifting exercises to find an accurate third position... to no avail. It seems that a common problem is reaching back (with any finger) for a flattened note, and allowing the thumb to get dragged back with it. These kids are almost always flat rather than sharp.
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