Playing in Tune

[Kevin]

Michael,
My last comment(Members videos- Careless Whisper) which was intended to be helpful to your intonation struggles and share my experiences in hopes that maybe as a whole or in part you might find something useful.
This video is a short session with tuner and my portable multi-track recorder. What it will demonstrate is the functionality of a tuner app that has become my favorite to use for helping me improve my intonation and hopefully improve my hearing with regard to accurate pitch recognition.
The first few minutes you will see the tuner responding to the saxophone with backing track. Next the backing track is turned down/off and you can see the tuner responding to each individual note without any other interfering sounds. If I had the time to put both videos synced on a split screen you would also see that the response of the tuner is pretty much identical in both instances. I think you will draw the same conclusion that I have in working with this app and setup is that the tuner gives a very accurate tuning reference to the saxophone notes being played with or without the backing track notes.
I have even tested this where I’m playing the sax on three other tracks as harmony backing tracks, and with just a bit more volume for the melody instrument I get an accurate tuning reference.
Disclaimer- this may not hold true for all the various models of tuners available (particularly pre-2000 models that were unable to respond in milli-seconds), but this demonstration should give credibility to my comments and the suggestions I was trying to offer.
My opinion is that the right tuner(model or app) can be a very accurate tuning reference device. Certainly more than just a ball park “reference” tool. Any calibration variances at the extents of the pitches used in the range the sax is capable of are likely indiscernible to the human ear.
It should perhaps be a better tool(for some) for training one’s hearing, because if someone is having difficulty hearing whether a pitch is accurately matched and plinking on a keyboard while trying to hold a note and listening for a non-dissonant match that they are having trouble hearing in the first place could likely frustrate the learner and prolong the learning process. Visibly watching a centered reference line gives a reliable feedback. I don’t want that statement to sound like I would minimize, or refute any other method that works for another- “different strokes for different folks” as the say. Just sharing my experience and maybe another can benefit and find that it helped them as well.
I used to be able to trust my ears more when it comes to intonation, but the ringing in my ears makes the dissonance of a slightly out of tune note less discernable. So checking myself more often with a tuner these days.

[Kevin]

sorry, guys, should have checked the video before putting the URL in the message. technical issues.
too late tonight to fix it, so will do a take 2 and upload tomorrow hopefully…

[Anonymous]

Kevin – some good points there!

All i’m saying is if you are tuning up your sax, make sure there are no others sounds occuring (like backing tracks, someone else tinkering on a keyboard) as the tuner will get confused as to which one it should be measuring.

As to using a tuner next to a played back recording – mine gives false readings for the sax.

When i play in an orchestra i tune up with the sound provided in the orchestra and not a tuner!

A lot does depend on your hearing, i sometimes have to tune up with a piano if i havent got a tuner.

But saying all that, i can your method works well for you!

[Anonymous]

Guess what Kevin?
i was comparing my i-touch (which i use as a tuner) to my Korg tuner (which i use as a tuner) this morning – i noticed when i played one of the notes on the sax the needle on the i-touch was on the left side whereas the needle on my korg was on the right side. One saying too sharp and the other too flat.

The microphone on my i-touch isn’t working as well as it was a few weeks ago ( i have on occasions dropped the i-touch in the past on carpeted floors), this now solves the mystery as to why my ealier recordings with my i-touch sounded a lot clearer on the sax, whereas recently i noticed my recordings of the sax have sounded blurred.

Fortunately bcause i always tune to a pitch sound like JF advocates instead of relying on a needle (which relies on a microphone) i have managed to stay in tune!

[Kevin]

My first upload I attempted to do a file conversion that would make the file much smaller(90Mb vs 500 Mb). What resulted was a file where the audio was 1-2sec behind the video which was what I needed to demo this Tuner app. So sorry if trying to view this gives long buffer time…
Adding to the comments above in the first post- The A440Hz tone generated was played thru the phone speaker into my recording mic, which is then played thru a stereo speaker system (with questionable speaker quality) and picked up with the mic built into the I-Pad. It read precisely 440Hz. At the very end before it quit the phone was being pulled away from the mic whereby you noticed the Hz dropping a few 10ths which is the tuner’s ability to respond quickly to a doppler effect.
The notes you will notice going sharp from my playing are the ones in the second octave. They sound a bit sharp to my ear and the tuner shows the correlation and the amount I am sharp accurately in both the non-back track and the back-track added examples. That is the intonation characteristic of this YAS-52 Alto sax.
Yes the tuner does bounce around at some notes (when combined with back track) whereby the volume of the sax note is not the dominant sound, but the small amount of notes where the tuner is not responding accurately to the pitch of the dominant instrument sound are insignificant to the wealth of accurate feed back this method can give.
That being said when you practice you can play with the backing track in your head-phones and the sax becomes the only sound in the room for the tuner, and you can watch the intonation live as you play. If your needing to read the music as you play the tuner app is large enough on the I-Pad to see in your peripheral vision adjacent to the sheet music. Perhaps someone will find this info useful.
For me this is a very key topic to playing the sax. Hope others will do uploads of intonation topics and their solutions that help them overcome…

[Anonymous]

Hi Guys, I’ve been burning brain cells investigating the relationship between the musical notes frequency and their pitch.

Here is an exercise (PDF sheet) which may assist one with pitch training. See what you think.

Octave Pitch Equidistant Exercise

[Kevin]

James, not sure if I’m misinterpreting your statement regarding mics. This is a topic I could learn a whole lot more about, but to my understanding a mic has a diaphram that responds to a specified freq. range (well below and above the Alto/Tenor sax ranges). I have never heard of a (non-damaged) mic being deficient in reproducing accurate frequencies, and the mics I have used have been models at the low to mid end of the quality spectrum. I have never heard a sound tech or musician request another mic because they were concerned the pitch coming from the PA system was out-of-tune to the input pitch played by their instrument. The sound quality is deficient on a bad or not so good mic, but to suspect the mic for a recording sounding out-of-tune? That will be a first for me, and come as a surprise. Though I’ve been around music most of my life, (minored in music in college, played guitar/violin for a few short stints in amateur bands) perhaps I haven’t seen it all…

[Anonymous]

@kevin – more good points! Thanks for sharing! Using headphones is a good idea, unfortunately i can’t work with them, my teacher months ago tried to get me to listen to the metronome through headphones when i was playing, couldnt cope with it.

When i play the sax i like to hear the sax in relation to the backing track or other players around me. When i do that i can instantly tell if i’m out of tune with the backing track, i don’t need a tuner for that, or for checking my recording afterwards. The only time i use a tuner is for tuning up the sax when i take it out the case.

In fact if someone plays out of tune – i switch off their recording straight away, it really irrates me, its like someone dragging nails down a blackboard. On the first note i would stop them.

Like JF says – the most important thing is you sound good, if you dont sound good then the band doesnt want you.

@Jeffrey – good stuff.

[john]

Great demo Kevin. the tuning is perfect, you can’t worry about slight variations that the tuner picks up cause our ears wouldn’t anyways.
you have obviously done a lot of work with the tuner and it shows.
All saxophones have a section or a note here and there that is troublesome even tho we have the sax playing in tune every where else, so we live with it, paying close attention when that note comes up we make the adjustment sharp or flat with our embouchure. You’ll hear and feel when it’s slightly out so a tuner can only help so much, but when we put in a lot of work with them it strenghtens our pitch awareness I suppose.

[Kevin]

Wow, the video James posted of the YAS-62 (professional model?) sax having the intonation issues was to me an eye opener. My YAS-52 (intermediate model) has pretty much the same intonation sprectrum deficiencies but perhaps a bit worse.
It is somewhat of a relief to hear that my struggles with playing in tune and all the pitch correction work it takes to play my horn were perhaps not all on me, but that the instrument is likely that deficient and in need of a mechanical correction. It is so much harder and more work to have to pitch correct flatter all the notes in the 2nd octave and especially D – F#. Then all the lower notes below E I would have to pitch correct sharper. I had come to think that it was just par for the course of playing the sax, though I had the dream that some day getting a “pro” sax with near perfect intonation would fix my situation.
In the video it shows the guy placing some temporary adhesive liner pc in the neck to see if it remedied the problem. I had some masking tape at hand, so I made a liner pc roughly 3-1/2in long by half the perimeter of the neck. Made it 3 layers thick and guided it into the neck and with a pencil pressed the adhesive back against the lower inner wall opposite the octave key hole.
I pulled out my trusty tuner and much to my delight the intonation was 90% better than what I would normally find. Still some room to optimize it some, but even with that result my ability to play in tune is multiple times easier than the pre-mod state. Didn’t hear any obvious differences in the tone, but will record a before and after to compare.
Don’t think I’m up to the splitting/soldering process they did to the neck in the video, but I may have some solution to try that can be more permanent. Or I can spend the $300 for a new neck like James found.
James, thanks so much for posting that video, it’s like hearing a diagnosis that your cancer is in remission!

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