We all work with a tuner somewhere along the way. Often it’s in our tone exercises. But do you ever spend your practice time working with a tuner IN your solo?
What I mean is you put your tuner on the stand next to your solo and turn it on and look at it during your practice session.
PUT THE TUNER ON THE MUSIC STAND
Now if you work with a tuner for every single note in the piece, it’s going to take you a very long time to get through the piece. But, that will be time well spent.
Instead of checking every note, what I like to do when I’m working with a tuner is pick a phrase and tune just the first and last notes of that phrase. So, I tune the first note and then I stop at the end of that phrase to make sure that I have the ending note in tune.
When I feel like I know where I’m going with just those two pitches, then I might check a couple of beginning and ending phrases. Sometimes I look for a recurring note and will check the tuner every time that I come to that note.
Make sure that when you are working on this method, and you feel like you know where to play the note to get it in tune without looking at the tuner, that’s when you need to check to make sure you are in tune.
USING A TUNER TRAINS YOU EAR
So, that’s just a way to start using a tuner in your solo. You can use it in fast movements too it doesn’t have to be in just the slow movements.
Use a tuner when you’re practicing your solos. It will train your ear. You’ll be amazed that at some point from the beginning of a phrase to the end, you can tell at the end that you were a little bit flat. Using a tuner trains your ear. Try it, you’ll be glad you did.
Have fun!
DoctorFlute
Watch me demonstrate this:
FluteTips 55 Working with a Tuner IN Your Solo
