Any intonation training needs to start with pitch matching. Until students can match unison pitches, they’ll never be able to tune their instruments, let alone play in tune as an ensemble. Pitch matching should be one of the first things we teach our students, and we need to keep coming back to it as our students progress.
As you start teaching students to match pitch, keep in mind that the octave and timbre of the pitches make a difference. Students will be able to match two pitches best if they are both played in the same octave and with the same timbre or instrument. The same pitch on different instruments can sound vastly different to young players. Moving the pitches an octave apart makes it more difficult. Moving them two octaves apart makes it more difficult still.
For that reason, I never have my students tune to the bass, nor do I expect my young basses to tune to the same reference pitch as everyone else. I have my basses tune individually with a tuner to begin with. Once they are more advanced, I have them play harmonics to bring them up closer to the reference pitch, and I still check them often with a tuner.
Teaching students to match pitch is somewhat similar to teaching someone to shoot an arrow into a target. In the beginning, you just hope the arrow goes in the right general direction. As they progress and start hitting the target, you can give them smaller and smaller targets to hit. When we’re teaching intonation, the goal is to keep shrinking the target. To help with this, I’ve found some great apps that I like to use with my students.
InTune and Dango Brothers are both apps that gamify pitch matching practice. InTune plays two pitches and you have to identify if the second pitch is higher or lower than the first pitch. At first the pitches are widely different, but every time you get it right the pitches get closer together. I have my students play this as a class by showing me a thumbs up if they think the pitch is sharp and thumbs down if they think it’s flat. Within just a few rounds, I have students who insist the pitches are the same and I’ve had students get into heated arguments over whether it’s sharp or flat. I love the discussion because I can see my students starting to listen in a new way and figure out for themselves what it sounds like when a pitch is sharp or flat.
InTune is only available for iOS devices, so if that’s not an option for you, Dango Brothers is a website that does basically the same thing and the students can do it on their school computers. The difference with this app is that students are supposed to move the pitch up or down until it matches exactly. The pitch on the Dango Bros website is a plucked string instrument, so it helps students figure out how to match that kind of timbre. I usually have my students do this one individually, although you could play as a class as well.
After you’ve done some ear training, it’s time to start doing some kinesthetic exercises as well to help the students be able to match pitch on their instruments. Here are some of my favorites:
Dolby Sound Check
The exercise: Try this exercise with your class and you’ll see why I call it this. Play a drone tone or project a tuner on your screen and have everyone in the class play a unison pitch. Put your hands together and hold them out in front of you. When your hands are together, the class should play in unison, matching pitch as closely as possibly. Pull your hands apart and the class should slide away from the pitch, either sharp or flat. I let the students choose which direction to go. The farther apart your hands are, the farther away from the pitch they should play. Start by doing small movements away from the pitch and then go back to unison, then have them do bigger and bigger slides away and see how quickly they can go back to matching pitch.
Why I like it: Many young students have a hard time adjusting their fingers and hands to the right pitch. They either don’t know which direction to move or how much to move. This exercise allows them to intentionally experiment with what happens when they adjust a pitch and gives them practice in making adjustments quickly.
Pitch Passing Telephone
The exercise: Either you or a student plays a random pitch on their instrument. It doesn’t have to be an actual note; in fact sometimes it’s better if it’s not. You point to another student in the class and that student has to find the same pitch and match it to the first pitch. Once they’ve matched it, the first person stops playing (but keeps their finger in place!) and you have another student try to match the second person. Continue for as many students as you like. (I usually stop after 5-6 people.) The last person to play should see how closely they match the pitch from the first person.
Why I like it: My students enjoy this game way more than I thought they would, and I learned a lot about my students’ abilities. It gives students experience trying to find a note on their instrument by ear and helps them become more familiar with their fingerboard geography. Depending on how you do the activity, it also gives students practice in matching pitch in different octaves.
Stop, Drop, and Replay:
The exercise: Using either a drone tone or a tuner, have the class match pitch on a certain note. Once everyone is in tune, have them drop their hand, shake it out, and then put it back in the exact same place. If they aren’t quite in tune, have them adjust until they are. Repeat the process on the same note several times with the goal of hitting the pitch perfectly every time with as little adjustment as possible. Talk about touch points or contact points on the instrument that the students can use to make sure their hand is in the right place, as well as pitch tendencies (i.e. “I’m always slightly flat on this note.”)
Why I like it: I’ve started using this exercise more and more with my students because I’ve found it to be so effective. It’s great for learning new positions as well as just figuring out finger spacing. If I notice my students missing a specific note over and over again in a piece, we’ll do this exercise with that note a few times and it seems to fix it pretty quickly.