Everybody wants to play in tune, but not everybody can agree on what that even means. Much of it is not really a scientific thing, contrary to the beliefs of our electronic tuners. It’s far more human than that. It’s about relationships — your ear comparing one note to another, your fingertips either touching each other or stretching apart on a string or across strings. Sometimes it’s about which notes want to lean sharp or flat in order to sound good.
That’s what we’ll take a look at here. Having a better understanding of what you’re aiming for makes playing in tune a much easier goal to reach. In the next couple of articles, we’ll look first at ways to set up your hand for more effortless and accurate playing, and then we’ll go over some games/exercises to build good intonation into your playing.
First, some perspective. Important as it is, intonation is not our top priority. If you play out of tune, but in time and with good spirit, others can still play along with you, enjoy listening to you, and dance to your music. Good intonation makes it more pleasant and rewarding but is not essential. You can play beautifully in tune, but unless you have good timing, your music will be hard to listen to, impossible to dance to, and discouraging for other musicians who want to play along. Timing is a dealbreaker; intonation is not.
Having said all that, you still sound much better when you play in tune! Sloppy intonation can also change the whole mood of a tune, for example by making a major tune sound minor or sour.
OK, so what’s intonation all about? It’s about relationships. It’s not about matching a note to your electronic tuner, though that can be a useful test. It’s not about seeing an F# on a sheet of music and knowing where you’re supposed to put your finger, though that is a helpful skill. And it’s not about sticking the little colored strips on the fingerboard — your eyes can’t even see those strips accurately from the far end of the fiddle, and I’m afraid they are a symptom of a terrible disease called fret-envy!
The bottom line about finger relationships on the fiddle comes down to a simple question — Which pair of fingertips are touching each other on each string? One pair of fingertips touch on each string, in each key, while the others are spread a finger’s width apart. With this understanding in mind, and in your fingers’ muscle memory, you can play in tune without having to think about each finger individually. In Technique Video Group #4 you can learn these relationships physically, based on which finger a scale starts on, rather than on what the name of the key or the look of the key signature is — though again, those are useful skills, especially when communicating with other musicians.
As with so much in learning and playing fiddle, people are often held back by our cultural presumption (about 2500 years old!) that our brain (and eyes) have to be in charge of our body. New scientific studies are disproving this, and I’ll be writing about these findings soon in upcoming articles. In the mean time, you can get an idea of what I mean by referring to the blog post “Reversing Old Presumptions”.
As described in that “Reversing Old Presumptions” article, our ears are really in charge of our intonation. They know, better than we can guess, what is the right sound. Usually the ears have a very good idea how a tune goes after hearing it only twice! In terms of intonation, there are many factors that help the ears know about the finger relationships; some are mathematical, as when we match identical notes, notes that are an octave apart, or notes that are a fifth apart (directly across the string from each other). Nonmathematical relationships create buzzes or harmonious vibrations in the ears, but this work of the ears is not conscious or intellectual, and you don’t have to understand it. (Check out the article on the “Harmonic Series” in November 2015.) The brain may find all this earwork a mystery at first, but it needs to keep an open mind, observe, take notes, and allow the fingers and ears to adjust and match up notes together as you continue to make efforts to play in tune. As I mentioned at the top, specific suggestions for how to practice this will be discussed in the next article.
The best visual representation for understanding the finger relationships on the fiddle is shown on the Finger Finder slide rule (you can read and understand what I’m about to describe without a Finger Finder, but if you have one, get it out and take a look, or if you want to get one, they’re available on this site in the Credits Store or elsewhere online, such as here, and in this YouTube). Images from the Finger Finder have been animated on video for real-time reference in Technique Video Group #4, which focuses on note patterns, scales, and arpeggios.
The main reason the Finger Finder is so helpful is that it represents all possible finger positions as adjacent circles — these are basically our finger-widths (please don’t fall down the rabbit hole of worrying about thickness of your fingers compared to someone else’s — your muscle memory will understand the concept). Each finger is generally responsible for two finger-widths (two adjacent circles on the Finger Finder). The Finger Finder shows a dotted line drawn across the strings to indicate the “territory” of each finger.
This simplifies the whole problem of intonation. It all boils down to this: Each finger has a low and a high position, and on each string, one pair of fingertips is touching.
This physical aspect of playing in tune is crucial. Your brain has way too much to do to keep track of where each finger is supposed to go. It all needs to be absorbed by your muscle memory. Fingering maps which list names of notes for each half step can be intellectually helpful, but they don’t encourage the physical part of playing. Professional musicians play by sound and feel, and rarely by thinking specifically about the names of notes. If you grabbed the bow off the strings of a fiddler mid-stroke, and asked what notes she had just played, she would have to reconstruct them for you; she would not likely be aware of them while playing.
The relationships that allow you to play in tune are a lot easier to learn when you keep your fingers on the strings. The first finger is the anchor for the others, which get a feel for their relationship to the first finger and to neighboring fingers. These relationships extend also to how fingers are placed on neighboring strings. There is a specific physical feeling to placing one finger on one string while having another finger on another string, as when we move through a finger pattern such as broken thirds (see TechVid Group 4), or simply down a scale, or if we play chords, or play a tune with a lot of cross bowing back and forth. Playing in tune is about what it feels like to have both fingers ready to go, in relation to each other, rather than playing first one note correctly, then the next, in isolation.
Allow your ears to do their work, and keep your fingers down whenever you can, to help them retain a feel for where they’ve been. Try a scale in conjunction with a tune. The third note of any scale is always very important; in a major scale that note sounds better when played on the high side (but don’t tell your electronic tuner about this, it might short-circuit!).
Next time, we’ll get into more practical tips, but for now, open your ears and pay attention. Try thinking in groups of notes, relationships of fingers, consult your Finger Finder to notice patterns you may not have noticed before, and let your ears and hands experiment!
Good article.