0:14
Find intonations and issues of technique and also an issue of mind's
ear, hearing intonations, how do you,
encourage orchestras and string players particularly?
Play in tune.
>> Well, you know, it's, it's a big problem.
Orchestras have a specifically large problem
because tendencies of instruments are different.
String tendencies are different from wind tendencies, you know?
Some tend to go sharp at some point, others flat at certain
point, depending the temperature and weather and the key and all of that.
So, sometimes I wonder, it's a miracle that, that an
orchestra can ever play in tune with itself, you know?
There's so many.
Challenges.
0:50
The first step, obviously, is that each player needs
to be able to play in tune with themselves.
Can they play a scale in tune, with proper interval, recognition?
If they can't play in tune on their
own instrument your battle is much greater, obviously.
>> Hm.
>> So that's one of the reasons I like to ask.
String players to play scales for me in my auditions.
I ask them for a three octave scale up and down.
I tell them I don't care what speed it is.
I don't care what bowing you use.
I'm, just going to listen for the pitch and see
if they have a, decent intervallic relationships and by
you know, the time they get up to the
third octave, sometimes it's way out there and some other.
Planet, but
>> Terms are important, its pretty happening if you ask
Zeal what his top thing would be, rhythm rhythm, rhythm, rhythm.
>> Yeah.
>> His next five or six might be, pitch.
>> I would think so because that
orchestra also played incredible intonation over the years.
So, that is one thing, obviously the individuals have
to be able play in tune on their own instruments.
Then we do have to counter the tendencies of whose going to be
sharp on certain notes and certain chords and whose going to be flat.
1:54
strings, I find, one of the easiest things to do
is just to isolate them and have them play a passage.
alone.
I'll just say, first violins, let's just take these eight bars under tempo.
Then I'll listen and say the F-sharp in the
third beat of that second bar is out of tune.
You know, just be aware of that.
And, if you do that a couple of times it falls into place.
You hear them do it alone and you make them aware of where the problem is.
You can't single out one person and say you were that one that's
sharp when you've got you know, 18 or 20 people in the section.
But, you make them aware and if you do it
slowly you can hear the tendencies where they are, and then,
it may come where they concert master may suggest hey
let's try a different fingering here to solve that intonation problem.
And that will work, and sometimes I'll have all the strings
play something together, just to listen to the, intonation among themselves.
With the winds and brass I just have to, I, I don't take chords apart.
I will sometimes hold the chord, and just say, okay, hold it, and tune it.
Listen to each other, adjust.
2:57
Sometimes when we have faculty members running sectionals here
for our winds and brass, I've gone in and
listened, and one of our colleagues, as soon as
he says, be aware of your pitch, it fixes itself.
A lot of it is awareness, and making them aware of where the problem is.
And they'll start, to do it.
3:21
I will find that doing things slowly sometimes helps
for everybody, doing things in unison helps, and holding chords,
and just tuning them at a certain key spot when
we did the consecration of the house overture of Beethoven.
Just opens with, this, four or five spaced chords with huge rests in between them.
I would just have them hold the chord, not so forte, until it was in tune, and
then the next one, and then we would play
them in tempo and they were like 200% better.
3:50
Without having to single out people or say, all right lets hear
these octaves now and now put in the fifth and all that.
I know people do that, it's time consuming, its
tedious and sometimes you don't always get it right either.
I remember vividly, of course this applies to a professional situation.
But, we had a, conductors skill conference in Houston one year and
one of our panelist was the principle clarinet of the Houston symphony.
And, one of the conductors asked him.
How do you deal with, intonation issues?
or, or how do you want the conductor, to deal with intonation at the wings?
4:23
And he said, the first thing he said was, don't, take
the chord apart note by note and try to tune it.
He says first of all you'll be wrong half the time, secondly that's our job.
Make us aware of where the problem is, we'll fix it.
But, good intonation is a long term process.
He said we just hired a new second clarinet a year and a half ago.
4:51
I sit next to the principal bassoon for 26 years.
I know every note on his instrument, he know's every
not on my instrument that's how you get good intonation.
Obviously we can't do that in an academic
situation, you can't do that in a community orchestra.
But you can raise people's consciousness and awareness of, intonation issues.
>> And, and to connect with some of our other videos in
terms of kind of the spectrum between professional and less experienced players.
With the professional player, they have control over their instructions.
>> Exactly.
>> You can just tell them the problem.
>> Yep, they'll solve it.
>> They'll figure out how to fix it.
For, intermediate players, you might have to break it down.
Mm-hm.
>> To give them the.
To illu-,
illuminate the skills that they need.
>> Exactly.
>> And the problems that they were there.
>> Yep.
>> And at the beginning level, you might really have to micro manage it.
>> Right.
>> But really, micro managing is inefficient in the long
run, because there is, thousands of notes in the piece.
>> That's right.
>> And people have to take their own responsibility.
>> And you have limited time to rehearse.
And it's also very tedious to be, getting to that
level of detail in a general rehearsal, where everybody is present.
And then a lot of people have to sit
around for ten minutes while you're tuning one chord.
That's why it is best done in sectional rehearsals.
>> Right.
>> And why when we do have sectionals I really would
like our wind and brass faculty to focus on intonation because
that's something they can really nail, with eight or 12 people
present and not waste the time of a large string section.
>> So it's about facilitating the group to take personal responsibility.
>> Yes.
>> For the issue of intonation.
>> It is.
Dr. Evan FeldmanAssociate Professor & Wind Ensemble Conductor
