[oberlin]

Hi all,
I've been getting back into playing after not playing for 20 years (I played through high school). I'm playing a rented, fairly new Taiwanese low-A bari, and I own a couple of tenors (1970s King Cleveland 615 and Yamaha YTS-23), mostly focused on the bari (love the bari!). I find I'm having intonation problems. I think it's partly due to bad habits, but I'm wondering if some is due to the horn, and if so, whether it can be improved.

Regarding bad habits, I'm just discovering now (through my teacher and through YouTube videos) that what I was taught in high school, to adjust the pitch of individual notes by biting down on the reed, is not really best practice. I'm struggling a bit to learn how to maintain a steady embouchure and use tongue and throat to make adjustments - it doesn't feel natural and I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm hoping that with practice it will improve.

That said, on the bari, there are a couple of notes that I just can't pull into tune. The middle C is nearly always quite flat, usually 15-20 cents flat is the closest I can get. The low and middle E are VERY sharp, sometimes as high as 50 cents sharp, and I find I can't bring it into tune.

I'm wondering whether these are things I'm likely to get better at, or whether there's a chance that the horn is out of adjustment somehow and should be looked at by the tech? In terms of getting better - long tones seem to be highly recommended - anything else?

Any tips on improving ear training, as well? Or should that be another thread?

Thanks!

 

[Pete Thomas]

Regarding bad habits, I'm just discovering now (through my teacher and through YouTube videos) that what I was taught in high school, to adjust the pitch of individual notes by biting down on the reed, is not really best practice.

It can be OK if not overdone. But I think you mean biting up, not down.

I'm wondering whether these are things I'm likely to get better at, or whether there's a chance that the horn is out of adjustment somehow and should be looked at by the tech? In terms of getting better - long tones seem to be highly recommended - anything else?

I would get it looked at before anything else. However you could also just try pushing the mouthpiece in, or tuning to that flat so it isn't flat, and then relaxing on all the other notes.

Any tips on improving ear training, as well? Or should that be another thread?

Thanks!

Another thread, ideally an existing one as opposed to starting yet another one.

https://forum.saxontheweb.net/gtsearch.php?q=ear training

 

[1saxman]

In my experience the Taiwan/China baritones (as well as the sop, alto, tenor) play flat. Even if yours doesn't, the intonation of many of these saxes is less than optimal. There a few things that can be adjusted during the process known as 'voicing' where the response and intonation of each note are adjusted to the extent possible. One of the tricks to that is the installation of 'crescents' in some tone holes depending on the intonation tendencies after all other methods have been exhausted. These are brass fillers shaped like a crescent moon that are soldered into a tone hole. Whatever, the notion that the embouchure 'never changes' is not accepted in some quarters - it depends on what kind of music you're playing and how you play it. But 'biting' is definitely something that you can easily teach yourself to not do. In practice, you just stop every time you catch yourself doing it. Soon your habits will change.
Without any technical help, and with the aid of a tuner which you obviously have, you'll have to find a mouthpiece position on the neck that allows the most notes to be closer to center rather than the method of just tuning on one note. I have adapted this method and use it every time I play, whether personal practice, band practice or gig - I mean, when getting ready to play, not at all times
Since you're playing a rented horn, I guess about all you can expect to be done is to get any leaks fixed.
OTOH, if you have an experienced ear, you can listen to ANY sax player's recording and hear varying degrees of intonation problems. With the super-trained classical guys, it will be difficult to hear because they really work on it. Just about every time I hear a baritone sax on a record, I hear it - pretty obvious. Not to say that you shouldn't work on it but in the practical sense there is no perfection in this.
Maybe you will be able to get a better bari in the future.
Finally, the mouthpiece/reed can bear some fault in these cases - your set-up might be too soft for you, particularly if you are playing the mouthpiece that came with the sax. Let's say you're playing a 2.5 reed now - consider going to 3, or 'Medium'. Sometimes this cuts down on wild intonation swings.

 

[turf3]

No one's yet mentioned, I believe, the most important aspect of playing baritone - air stream management. Even a tenor sized breath will not cut it when playing baritone. Before you start running yourself ragged staring at a tuner you need to learn how to take a real baritone-sized breath and blow through the thing, not at it.

If you'll push the MP in and blow through the horn properly you'll find a lot of your intonation issues disappear.

I have several standard recommendations, which I use whenever I'm trying to get a handle on a new instrument.

1) Long tones - full range of the horn - pppp to ffff and back to pppp. Yes, the tone will break up or drop out, you are trying to expand your dymanic range. Of course you are striving to keep the pitch from going flat when loud and sharp when soft - and you don't do that with your jaw! You do that with your oral cavity and your air support.

2) Interval studies. I have posted this exercise many many times but I'll repeat it now. You move from one note to the next only after each note has stabilized, this means the "tempo" of the exercise is quite slow. In the low registers you probably can't play the whole pattern in one breath - that's OK, just take a breath, repeat the last note, keep going. If you practice this exercise when you've completed the whole exercise over the full range of the horn, you'll have put careful attention to every interval less than an octave, twice. The objective at each note change is that the actual change itself (not the durations of the notes on either side of the change) should be as close to instantaneous as possible, without finger bobbles, or tonal bobbles, and matching intonation and tone quality on either side of the change.

OK, here is the pattern. I'll start you on low A and assume you're going to exchew altissimo for now, though if you have it you should extend the exercise as far up as you can play. Note to note changes get a lot more challenging in altissimo, so you need to be practicing up there, if you intend to actually play up there and not just screech.

First one: Low A-A#-up a seventh to the next A-A#- A just above the staff-A# in the staff - A in the staff-Low A#-Low A. Got the pattern? Minor second followed by major seventh, going up , then down.

Second: Low A-lowB-Ainstaff-B in staff-A above staff-B in staff-A in staff-low B-low A. So now a major second followed by minor seventh, etc.

Next one is As and Cs, then As and C#s, and so on. You get the drift.

When you're done with A, move to Bb and repeat the pattern.

Keep doing this till you run out of range at the top of the horn.

Personally I like to do one note and its sharp per day, so on Sunday I'll do A and A# patterns, on Monday I'll do B patterns, on Tuesday C and C#, and so on. This exercise takes a fair amount of time so few people are going to have time and endurance to do the whole thing every day.

3) I strongly recommend that as much as possible of your practice be outside in an area without reflective structures nearby (like a city park). When I was first coming to grips with the baritone, I lived in an apartment so almost all my practice had to be outdoors, and I think this helped tremendously in developing a full round mature sound. This is what the great Texas Tenors recommended (guys like Arnett Cobb who could blow down a brick wall).

 

[Dr G]

No one's yet mentioned, I believe, the most important aspect of playing baritone - air stream management. Even a tenor sized breath will not cut it when playing baritone. Before you start running yourself ragged staring at a tuner you need to learn how to take a real baritone-sized breath and blow through the thing, not at it.

If you'll push the MP in and blow through the horn properly you'll find a lot of your intonation issues disappear.

A full breath does not change volume when playing a different horn. Take a full breath and blow through the horn.

3) I strongly recommend that as much as possible of your practice be outside in an area without reflective structures nearby (like a city park). When I was first coming to grips with the baritone, I lived in an apartment so almost all my practice had to be outdoors, and I think this helped tremendously in developing a full round mature sound. This is what the great Texas Tenors recommended (guys like Arnett Cobb who could blow down a brick wall).

I, too, encourage practicing outdoors - reflective structures can also be fun. I recall playing with the reverb from a gym wall from a hundred yards away in a parking lot. Focus on projecting your sound until it fills all space.

Texas Tenors... What size breath would a bari player use in New Jersey? :twisted: :bluewink:

Windplayers could learn a lot from a tiny yoga practitioner.

 

[turf3]

A full breath does not change volume when playing a different horn. .

True enough, but tenor and alto players can get away with weaker and less efficient air stream; you can't hide that on baritone or bass sax. Even after 36 years as primarily a baritone player, if I've played the smaller horns for a while and have neglected the bari, I have to consciously remind myself to feel the breath down in my gut.

I can always tell alto and tenor players slumming on baritone by the shortness of their held notes and the way they go for reed buzz to get projection rather than a big, heavy sound that fills the room.

 

[Dr G]

True enough, but tenor and alto players can get away with weaker and less efficient air stream...

They will sound weak on tenor as well.

Please don't paint all players with the same brush. We know that it's just not true.

 

[soybean]

… I'm playing a rented, fairly new Taiwanese low-A bari, and I own a couple of tenors… I find I'm having intonation problems.…

In these situations, I always check to see that the neck is the original one. A mismatched neck can cause all sorts of intonation woes. Seeing as you are playing a rental, that is possibly the wrong neck. With rental horns, the parts can get swapped around by accident in the warehouse or on purpose if, for instance, a neck was damaged so they grab one from another horn and send it out the door.

I would recommend having a pro play your baritone. If some of the notes are still as much as 50 cents sharp, get a different horn. Yamaha ybs-52 is excellent. So are Yanagisawa.

 

[KeithL]

I've played several Taiwanese and a few Chinese baris and own a Barone branded Low Bb bari that's Taiwanese made, most of them have intonation and/or timbre quirks. I think they've done a better job copying alto, tenor, and soprano designs for many reasons. Of course most vintage baris have quirks of one form or another as well but folks are more tolerant of them because they often have fabulous sounds that make overcoming the quirks worth the effort.

The Bb2-C#2 on my Barone are naturally a bit flat especially if the horn is not completely warmed up. If I play for a couple of hours I find the intonation is better near the end of my practice session than at the beginning. One thing I'll do if the horn isn't warmed up or if I'm just struggling with these notes is add some combination of the two lower side keys. The chromatic or "side key" C that most folks just use for trills is almost perfectly in tune so that's one option for that particular note. The sharp E is more difficult to deal with but if both E1 and E2 are sharp you may want to have the key height on the D checked. I played an RS Berkeley Low Bb bari several years ago that had an E2 that was so sharp it was more like an E#- or Fb and was significantly worse than the D2, Eb2, or F2 which made it a bit puzzling.

As far as becoming more comfortable with voicing, using tongue height and throat to make adjustments, I'd suggest you read up on overtones and begin practicing them. Done correctly these are basically voicing exercises where you finger a single (usually lower octave note) and play the overtones above it by only changing your air stream. These can be tedious and frustrating to practice but it will likely improve both your sound and intonation.

Lastly, I'd agree with soybean's suggestion above; try some other horns especially those by Yamaha, Yanagisawa, and Selmer. I have nothing against Taiwanese horns. I own several including my two primary tenors a Barone Classic which is straight out of the box Taiwanese and a TM Custom which is basically a heavily customized Taiwanese horn. The baris are getting better however it seems to be a long arduous improvement process and, IMO, based upon the samples I've played, they aren't there yet, at least not in a way that would justify the $5k-$7k price tags.

 

[oberlin]

Thanks, everybody. That gives me lots to think about. It's definitely the correct neck for the horn. Regarding air volume, my instructor and I were working on that before COVID hit, and I'm continuing to do so as well as I can on my own. Playing outdoors isn't really an option for me, but I do have a large room to practice in. I do start every practice session with long tones, but haven't done much with overtones, yet, though I can add those in. I know my instructor has mentioned them, we just hadn't gotten that far. I'd only had a handful of lessons before everything was shut down.

I spoke with the tech at the store that owns the horn, and he's going to take a look at it soon as well. If there is a key height issue, then he'll be able to fix it. Either way, sounds like I have some work to do!

Thanks for all the suggestions!

 

[oberlin]

I just realized that my tuner app was set to "Just Temperament". When I switched to "Equal" I find those difficult notes no longer registering so seriously out of tune. Did I just have the tuner set incorrectly?

 

[adamk]

I just realized that my tuner app was set to "Just Temperament". When I switched to "Equal" I find those difficult notes no longer registering so seriously out of tune. Did I just have the tuner set incorrectly?

Just is key signature specific, no wonder you were so out.
You were trying to play an equal temperament (where all notes are equally distant from each other) over a system designed to make beatless 3rds,
4th and 5ths which definitely won't transfer to other key centers.

 

[Pete Thomas]

I just realized that my tuner app was set to "Just Temperament". When I switched to "Equal" I find those difficult notes no longer registering so seriously out of tune. Did I just have the tuner set incorrectly?

For general use yes, except that as long as you accept tuners aren't necessarily the best way to check tuning or intonation then there can be a place for just intonation setting. But it would only apply to the key it is set to.

But yes for general (no specific key) use It should be equal temperament, but I wouldn't get hung up about the needle being bang on. I will often intentionally be fine with notes "way off" what the tuner says.

 

[oberlin]

Thanks, that makes sense, and it's a bit of a relief! I couldn't understand why it was so bad!

I've also been practicing matching to and playing over drones, without looking at the tuner. My ear is not naturally particularly discriminating, so I'm trying to practice hearing the beats, and adjusting. But I do find using the tuner has been helpful for understanding which direction each note on the sax tends towards, whether sharp or flat.

 

[Pete Thomas]

Thanks, that makes sense, and it's a bit of a relief! I couldn't understand why it was so bad!

It can also be bad with equal temperament, because the human brain may have a tendency to play just intonation when there is no reference keyboard around (or even if there is)