The goal is to achieve accurate intonation while maintaining a pleasing tone quality. These suggestions will allow you to achieve this goal.
- Maintain adequate air support no matter the pitch issue.
- Hear the pitch you are aiming for before you play it.
Good Ears and Good Air are the key!
Everything you do as a wind player has an effect on intonation.
- The position of your tongue
- The pressure from your lips
- Whether your lips are rolled out (puckered) or rolled in
- The space between your teeth/jaws
- The space of your oral cavity
- The position of your lips on the reed
- The angle of the bocal and reed as they enter the mouth
- The amount of breath support you provide
Each of these elements might feel a little different on any given day and they can all change with hardly any effort. The only way to gain consistent control of intonation and tone quality is to develop excellent listening skills and breath support.
Develop your listening skills so that you can hear where your notes need to be to fit within the harmonic structure BEFORE you play them.
- Start with interval and pattern studies. Learn to hear the difference between a half-step and a whole step.
- Start by getting really familiar with the sound of the major scale by learning it in every key.
- Next, learn the sound of the three forms of minor scales (natural, harmonic, and melodic). Learn what is the same about the three scale and what makes each one different from the other two forms. Compare the major and minor scales. How are they similar and how are they different?
- Follow this by learning to identify the different qualities of chords beginning with major and minor.
Remember, if you can hear it, you can play it!
If the notes are sharp, think “hot pizza” mouth
- Open the oral cavity,
- Voice a low vowel shape to lower the back of the tongue (“ah”),
- Space the teeth – relax the lower jaw,
- Soften lips/reduce pressure on reed,
- If necessary, use a lower fingering.
“If the notes are flat, think “blowing cold air”
- Increase breath support,
- Natural space in oral cavity,
- Voice a higher vowel shape to raise back of tongue (“eee”)
- Reduce space between teeth
- Increase lip support slightly, primarily from the center of the bottom lip.
Reminders
- Intonation is second only to rhythm in the musical hierarchy.
- Listen and Aim. Your ears are the tuning slide for the bassoon.
- Always play with your best air support.
- Intonation is a serious challenge because bassoon pitch is very flexible. You must have an accurate aural target to play in tune.
- Developing a “good ear” is crucial so start early by having working with a Tuning CD and tone-generating tuners which train the ears instead of needle-indicator or strobe-type tuners which train the eyes.
- Accurate intonation with the best tone quality requires the proper balance between breath support, volume and speed of air, and lip support. Aim to produce a middle C with the reed on the bocal.
- Too much lip and too little breath support will produce a thin, pinched, sharp sound with unstable response.
- Too little lip and too great a volume of air will produce a flabby, flat sound with unstable response.
- The ratio of lip to air will change as the register and/or dynamic changes.
- Breath support remains constant. Adequate breath support will allow the player to use very little lip to control the tone, pitch, and response of a note. Minimal or absent breath support will force the player to use more lip to control the sound.
- Said another way, maximum breath support allows the lips to be used for other things (tone color and nuance). If you do not have good breath support, you have to compensate by using your lips which means they cannot do anything else, and you have no nuance of expression or range of tone color.
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