[saxmaam]

A few new blog posts:

http://saxmaammusing.wordpress.com/

Is anyone else keeping a learner blog? I was thinking we could use this thread to notify others of updates.

Susan

 

[swperry1]

Cool idea! Where does one go to start blogging? Hopefully for free...

 

[saxmaam]

wordpress.com is very easy. There are others.

 

[lutemann]

I read your blog. I've mentioned this before, but this has really worked for me in terms of intonation. I might make a short video of the process. It involves playing against a very slow major scale- I use C and Db major. First you play in unison, then in 3rds etc. You can also play short scale passages aginst the each not of the scale. It really sharpens the ear for duets. In a sense, you are playing a duet, but you can think exclusively in terms of being in tune. Here are the midi files.

http://www.southalabama.edu/mathstat/personal_pages/murdick/stuff/Community Music School/Tuning/

 

[saxmaam]

A video would be great! Your explanation is clear. But sometimes you learn from demonstrations things you wouldn't learn from descriptions.

Best,

Susan

 

[lutemann]

A video would be great! Your explanation is clear. But sometimes you learn from demonstrations things you wouldn't learn from descriptions.

Best,

Susan

Here's a video. It's kind of sloppy, so I think I'll make another one. After I practice this for about 10 minutes I start to sound pretty good.

 

[saxmaam]

That's cool, Lutemann. Can you find a voice on your synthesizer that doesn't have vibrato? that would really help when tuning intervals, because then you could hear the beat frequencies and combination tones.

 

[lutemann]

I might be able to. It doesn't have much vibrato as it is. When you put it up to a tuner, it stays steady. What I use is an old version of Finale. a pure tone would be better.

 

[saxmaam]

It sounded like a lot of vibrato to me, but I've been practicing with no-vibrato tones. I think the tuner stays steady because the vibrato is faster than the response of the tuner.

Seriously, there is a lot to hear in the interaction between tones if you get rid of the vibrato. Ideal is to play against a recording of yourself playing steady tones.

 

[lutemann]

I would think a pure tone would be better than myself. Also, I am always a little low on certain first octave notes. I can't get them perfect without hurting the tone. It seems, however, that the lower notes sound better than the higher notes if they a slightly out of tune. I call it the "washtub bass" effect. If a note is thick with overtones, the fundamental doesn't have to be perfect for the note to sound good. I'll have to buy a tuner that plays 12 pure notes. Then I can work on one note at a time.

 

[lutemann]

I found a good pure (Ithink) player online. See if this is useful. I'm going to try it today.

http://www.seventhstring.com/tuningfork/tuningfork.html

 

[saxmaam]

Yup. No vibrato on that one!

 

[lutemann]

What I did with that one is to use it for long tones. I'd put on a G and play a G long tone and then play arpeggios that included G over it.

 

[saxmaam]

So ... what I do is try to tune intervals. Play in unison and try to get any beat frequencies out. Ditto for octaves and P5. P4 and M3 get more complicated.

When playing the P5 against a tone, you may hear a combination tone. EG if you play G over a drone C, you may hear the C one and two octaves down from the drone C. Those notes are more sensitive to pitch variation than the pitch you are playing. If a note moves one cent in the upper octave, the combination tone moves multiple cents. (A 1 Hz change in a lower octave translates into more cents than a 1 Hz change in the upper octave). So hearing that combination tone and striving to tune the combination tone to the drone C can help you tune your intervals in just intonation.

Which combination tones you can hear is really sensitive to pitch and your placement in the room and what harmonic content is present in the two tones you are trying to tune. Not to mention what kind of hearing loss you have and the peculiarities of what your brain has and hasn't learned to recognize. I've found it helpful to experiment until I find combinations I can "hear into" well, then try to expand my perception into neighboring note pairs. So with voice, I got something going with E,F,and G over middle C. Then I moved up to E#,F#, and G# against C# one semitone up.

I've been making some progress with this after being frustrated for years every time I revisited the topic. Planning some blog posts on the subject. I've actually made more progress singing than with the saxophone, so that's what I'll post first.

PS (edit):

Sometimes with vocal intervals my tuner shows the combination tone rather than the drone or my voice. For example, I can play E drone and sing G above it, and my tuner indicates C. When my G is in tune with the E drone, that C is 14 cents sharp compared to equal temperament.

I find this fascinating. Something a math guy would appreciate?

 

[saxmaam]

New posts here:

http://saxmaammusing.wordpress.com/

 

[saxmaam]

Made some new posts. Wouldn't mind some company on this thread

 

[lutemann]

Are you using relative pitch or fixed pitch for your sight singing? If you are using relative pitch, you might look at this book. It's fabulous. The Lieberman book is great for patterns and rhythm and an early 20th century book, "Melodia", is the best one I've seen for actual singing.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...pbooks&field-keywords=lieberman+sight+singing

http://www.amazon.com/Melodia-Cours...=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333558543&sr=1-5

 

[saxmaam]

Are you using relative pitch or fixed pitch for your sight singing? If you are using relative pitch, you might look at this book. It's fabulous. The Lieberman book is great for patterns and rhythm and an early 20th century book, "Melodia", is the best one I've seen for actual singing.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...pbooks&field-keywords=lieberman+sight+singing

http://www.amazon.com/Melodia-Cours...=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333558543&sr=1-5

Hi Lutemann,

I'm actually using the Lieberman book (I got a stack of used books to rotate through). What makes Melodia the best?

 

[lutemann]

The Melodia is extremely progressive. Many sight singing teachers find it boring, and therefore it has fallen into disuse. What the teachers don't understand is that it is exciting for students because they are almost always successful using this book. Success is exhilarating.

I find the Lieberman book useful for the rhythmic patterns and the interval (scale number) patterns. It's OK for singing exercises.

BTW, my old eyes cannot read the white on black of your blog. Sorry.

 

[saxmaam]

The Melodia is extremely progressive. Many sight singing teachers find it boring, and therefore it has fallen into disuse. What the teachers don't understand is that it is exciting for students because they are almost always successful using this book. Success is exhilarating.

I find the Lieberman book useful for the rhythmic patterns and the interval (scale number) patterns. It's OK for singing exercises.

BTW, my old eyes cannot read the white on black of your blog. Sorry.

Hey, LuteMann,

I picked up the Melodia book. I'm still working through the easy stuff, but I can see it gets interesting after a bit.

Blog. Have you tried making the text bigger on the blog (press the + key while holding down the ctrl key)? Or turning off the page style (in Firefox View menu, select Page Style, then No Style)? I could change the style if neither of those works for you. It's just that I had a hard time finding a clean and wide template that I like the looks of.

Susan