You’ve taught all the stuff, done all the exercises, and used all the tools. You are pretty darn sure that your students know what it means to be in tune and how to play it, but your groups still can’t play their pieces in tune. Listening to them play makes you cringe, yet they seem blissfully unaware of how bad their intonation is. What is going on?
First of all, take a breath and step back for a minute. Remember, playing an instrument – especially a string instrument – is hard. It’s an enormously complex skill. Your students have to think about SO. MANY. THINGS. They might totally get intonation in the context of warmups and exercises, but applying it to an actual piece of music with all the other stuff going on is a level up. It might take a little while for them to get there.
Your job now is to get them to that next level. Here are some things that might help.
Isolate the problem.
You can’t fix the problem if you don’t know what it is. Find the out-of-tune notes and look at why the intonation problems are happening. If your students have a solid understanding of intonation basics, then the intonation problems are probably caused by something in the context of the music and can often be fixed pretty easily. (I’ve found many intonation problems aren’t intonation problems at all but actually just students playing wrong notes.)
If you can’t identify a specific note or passage that’s out of tune because everything is out of tune, then your students don’t understand intonation yet. Don’t waste your time trying to fix the intonation on the piece. Spend more time on intonation exercises.
Look at the context of the intonation problem in the music.
It’s almost never effective to fix intonation one note at a time. Every note comes from somewhere and goes somewhere. Often a note is out of tune because of the notes around it. Suggesting a different fingering sometimes helps, or practicing the notes in context. I’ve found certain contexts trigger intonation problems more than others.
Changing finger patterns from string to string. This is a big one. Students simply forget to change finger patterns, or they don’t completely change and get stuck halfway. Help the students figure out what finger pattern they should be using. Have them write it in their music, or mark in where the half steps are. Do warmups where you practice changing between different finger patterns. (For more finger pattern exercises, see Teaching Intonation Part 4: Finger Patterns.)
Awkward finger patterns. Sometimes you run into finger patterns outside of the most common four. In harmonic minor, for example, you have the augmented second between the 6th and 7th scale degrees. That’s a big stretch and it will most likely be out of tune. When you run into those awkward stretches, practice them. Create warmups around them. Have the students sing them so they know what it should sound like.
Passages with shifting, or starting in a higher position without preparation. Until students are fully comfortable with a certain position, playing in that position will cause intonation problems. You will also have more intonation problems if students have to start in a higher position without leading into it. For example, if the cellos have to start a piece on an F# in 4th position, they will most likely be out of tune for the first couple notes they play until they have time to adjust. You can fix the shifting problems by spending more time with shifting exercises so students are more comfortable in upper positions. You can also play games like Stop, Drop, Replay to help them pick out specific notes consistently, or use a drone on the pitch they shift to.
Unfamiliar keys and accidentals. I’ve been playing violin for almost 30 years and I still can’t play in tune in keys with more than three flats. Almost all of educational string music is written in D and G Major and their relative and parallel minors, with occasional ventures into F, C, and A major. When students suddenly have to play in A flat major, yeah, they’re going to be out of tune. We shouldn’t be surprised when they can’t figure out how to play a D flat. It’s not just a matter of knowing that D flat is the same as C sharp on the piano. On a string instrument it feels different. It sounds different. It’s absolutely not the same. Give students exercises in different keys. Expand their tonic horizons. Purposefully program music in less-common keys.
Play the excerpt harmonically.
String players focus so much on melodic lines that they can’t always hear how the lines fit together. Take out the melody. Play the passage as a chord progression, one chord at a time. Allow the students to hear what those chords should sound like and how the notes fit together. Once they understand the role their note plays in context, they will be more likely to play it in tune. You can find more exercises for practicing intonation with intervals and chords here.
Sing or hum the part.
Take out the technical stuff. Let the students experience what it should sound like without having to think about the fingers and bow and everything else. Have one section sing while the rest of the orchestra plays. Have one section play while the rest of the orchestra sings. Have them play everything except the out-of-tune note and just sing that one note. There are lots of ways to use singing to help the students better audiate their part.
Play it wrong on purpose, then play it right.
Often when students play out of tune, they just don’t know what it should sound like. Model it for them. Play it incorrectly and then correctly so they can hear the difference, then have them do the same thing so they can feel the difference.
Make it individual.
Nobody wants to single out students, but if you don’t fix intonation problems individually, you will never actually fix the intonation problems. Students need individualized feedback in order to get better. Have every student in the section play the out-of-tune note and check it with a tuner. Have students play in pairs and see how well they match each other. Start with one student who plays in tune and add one student at a time until everyone in the section can play in tune.
SLOW IT DOWN.
I cannot emphasize this enough. Students need time to process each note. Slow down and keep it slow until they’ve had enough repetitions to create the muscle memory. When the students can play it in tune consistently, speed it up gradually. The faster you go, the more the intonation will slip back to what it was before. If you speed up too quickly, you will lose all the work you just put into fixing it.
When in doubt, go back to the exercises. Modify them to work on the specific issues that your students have in their pieces. Create new exercises, if needed. More than anything, be patient and remember that you’re playing the long game. If your orchestra isn’t playing in tune right now, think about what you can do to help them get there in the next year and start doing it today.