Tuning Drills Play-along: I-V-I in B-flat

[AndrewMeronek]

An experimental play-along that I hope people will find interesting. Several years ago I wrote a book of drills along these lines which included lots of standard, simple progressions like this in various keys. I'm thinking that a lot of people will find a similar concept useful in individual practice outside of group rehearsals. I could potentially just go ahead and make a whole bunch of these, but before I go crazy, I'd like to ask some of you to play along with this and give me feedback. Play trombone with it, sing with it, play some other pitch-adjustable instruments with it; be creative.

[Retracted, replaced by updated video]

[AndrewMeronek]

One thing I'm thinking of is some peoples' tendencies to use an electronic tuner as a kind of tuning bible, which IMHO has fallacies. But, is it important in drills of this kind to have the 'root' reference pitch match what a tuner would think precisely, or match pitch relative to in-tune modulations that would come from other keys? I'm gravitating to matching a tuner, so that someone can play this exercise with a tuner and see themselves get in tune at '-14 cents' on a major third (for example) shown on their tuner. Because of the way I initially set up this exercise particular exercise, B-flat is actually around 4 cents flatter than 12EDO, which means that the D at -14 cents on a tuner isn't actually locking in that pitch; the D would have to show -18 cents on a tuner. Is this a concern, or am I being too much of a nit-pick?

[harrisonreed]

Now you're bringing up my point that I proposed in the other thread you did on intonation.

[AndrewMeronek]

Now you're bringing up my point that I proposed in the other thread you did on intonation.

In a way, yes. I'm more concerned about just the clarity of the presentation in of itself. These are not intended as 'universal' tuning mandates - just as a good starting point for students to get used to listening for this kind of stuff, and to relate this kind of aural training more directly to basic harmonic music theory.

Besides, if traditional musical interpretation has problems with trying to play consistently perfect intonation, there's still nothing wrong with shedding light on that.

[AndrewMeronek]

OK, the finished product, at least in terms of this first set of videos. I linked a bunch of these play-along videos on my website so they're all in one place, and probably would be bad taste to do a similar thing in this thread. I did end up modifying the video I created for the OP and replacing it with the update.

https://andrewmeronek.com/group-tuning- ... ngs-i-v-i/

[PaulT]

I used it tonight. Thanks.

I don't have the experience to critique it. All I can say was I found it easy to use, fun, and useful. I did like the length of each tone scale segment. It gave me time to settle into each exercise and really listen to my horn.

Thanks, again

Paul

[AndrewMeronek]

Cool!

I'm glad you had some fun with it.

[AndrewMeronek]

Fellow musicians, I just would appreciate some eyes. I just finished creating this planned set of videos (for now) of tuning drills. This is a lot of videos, and I think I did a pretty good job of error-checking, but if you folks feel curious, I ask that you pick a couple at random and check them for typos/audio problems/etc. For your convenience, below are links via my website; I find it convenient to organize these this way, although you certainly don't have to go through my website if you don't want. Doing a search by my name on Youtube will turn them up as well.

https://andrewmeronek.com/group-tuning- ... ngs-i-v-i/

https://andrewmeronek.com/group-tuning- ... gs-i-iv-i/

https://andrewmeronek.com/group-tuning- ... gs-i-v7-i/

https://andrewmeronek.com/group-tuning- ... v-i-minor/

https://andrewmeronek.com/group-tuning- ... v-i-minor/

https://andrewmeronek.com/group-tuning- ... 7-i-minor/

https://andrewmeronek.com/group-tuning- ... playlists/