Same as any other size, its just more flexible. Play with a piano or recording of a drone. Play unisons and intervals. Don't rely on the visual feedback at all, use your ears. Do overtone exercises and work on voicing the instrument properly.

How is your altissimo on tenor? Half the soprano is in that range, so voicing the soprano properly and voicing tenor altissimo properly is in the same range. So the same vocal shape feeling thst works for altissimo tenor is the neighborhood of where you need to be on soprano.

 

Agreed, focus on playing unisons and intervals to a high quality drone.

This is an excellent cello drone http://www.dronetonetool.com/

Sampled from a real cello with a keyboard to change pitches. Start with matching roots then 5ths then 3rds, etc...

 

You do long tones in front of a tuner to learn the "signature" of your horn --- which notes are close, which are flat, which are sharp. Pay attention.

Then practice long tones with drones. This will teach your ears.

Then slow scales with audio reference, if you have any way to do MIDI it's easy to set up whole note scales at about mm=60

Insights and incites by Notes

 

This is great advice! Exactly what I would recommend. Using a visual tuner is good exercise at first, but that won't help you on the bandstand. It's crucial to practice tuning yourself by listening to a reference. A drone can be great, but I also recommend doing long tones to recordings. What I do is put my iTunes on shuffle and play long tones to whatever song comes up, fitting my intonation to whatever that recording is. That builds pitch flexibility and intonation awareness all at the same time.

You do long tones in front of a tuner to learn the "signature" of your horn --- which notes are close, which are flat, which are sharp. Pay attention.

Then practice long tones with drones. This will teach your ears.

 

I play my clarinet and alto in tune. Only the tenor is sharp. Do you think it could be the throat and embouchure carrying over from clarinet and alto making me sharp? It's a 1950s Conn 10M that I just had checked out two months ago.

 

Possibly. Each of those requires a different embouchure. But if every note is sharp, just pull out the mouthpiece.

 

The difficult thing with a soprano is finding the right position for the mouthpiece. It’s easy to lip a note into tune, but if you start doing that, you end up having to lip every note into tune separately. Some instruments are only in tune with the mouthpiece a little more out and a tighter embouchure, some with the mouthpiece further in and a looser embouchure, different voicings with mouth and tongue. A starting point is blowing a low B, then overblow it without octave key and then finger middle B - long tube versus short tube B. If they are both in tune, the instrument is in tune with itself. But you can often get it in tune both ways (tight and loose embouchure, mouthpiece out or in). Experiment and find your and your setups ideal and most comfortable position, embouchure and voicing. If it works, very little embouchure adjustment is needed through different registers and notes. The area where the tuning either works or not, is in the really high and altissimo register. A tuner will tell. Finding your sweet spot is worth the effort. Once you find it, the general tuning falls into place.

 

The difficult thing with a soprano is finding the right position for the mouthpiece. It's easy to lip a note into tune, but if you start doing that, you end up having to lip every note into tune separately. Some instruments are only in tune with the mouthpiece a little more out and a tighter embouchure, some with the mouthpiece further in and a looser embouchure, different voicings with mouth and tongue. A starting point is blowing a low B, then overblow it without octave key and then finger middle B - long tube versus short tube B. If they are both in tune, the instrument is in tune with itself.

Yes, it's the Bs and C#s that are going to be the biggest issue. Get those sound as good as possible to your ear, note the mouthpiece position and use that as a starting point to lip any notes as necessary.

I agree that tuners are only useful for an initial reference, other than that they can be counter productive. You just have to train your ears to hear in tune and out of tune, concentrate on what you hear from your horn com pared to the backing (be it a backing track, a band or a drone)

 

Record yourself playing Blue Bossa.