Often, when I brainstorm ideas for blog posts, I look around in my daily life for inspiration. When contemplating what the subject of today's post would be, it did not take long for me to stumble upon the topic of 'Intonation'. As a musician, I would say that my life is concerned with and consumed by intonation, oh, a good 90% of the time. It is a beast that can be your best friend or worst enemy, it haunts your every move, it is never asleep and always ready to rear it's head. I have never put into words before exactly what intonation means, how it feels or what it does, so bear with me as I do my best now!
I guess the best and most simple way I can think of to describe the meaning of intonation is that it is a tuning system, although really it is so much more. The reason why it is so difficult to describe is because, although there are various rules, intonation changes all the time; it largely depends on the piece you are playing, it depends on the key, the specific chord and note within the chord, the harmony progression, the mood, the colour, it even depends on which country you are in! I say that because, when we get a little scientific about it, the note 'A' of today, so in 2016, is at a frequency of about 443Hz on the continent of Europe, however it is much lower, about 440-442 Hz, in the UK, Ireland and North America. Added to which, 'A' is climbing all the time. If we take it back old school, to Bach's time for example, the 'A' would have been about 437 Hz, almost what we hear as a 'G' now! And who knows, in another 100 years 'A' could have climbed so high that it would sound like our 'B'! By the way, we take 'A' (the one above middle 'C') as the note for tuning measurement - it is the note all orchestras tune to, it's a note that all instruments have in common and it is therefore the note for reference.
But back to talking about music. I think I first discovered the power of intonation when I started to play chamber music really seriously, at about 13 years old. Suddenly I was no longer just a one-line instrument (violin), but, in the case of string quartet music, I was one of four. I really clearly remember working on intonation for the first time with a quartet. It is incredibly slow work; for every single note that we play, that in turn make whole chords, we have to make decisions about whether the 3rd of the chord should be low or high, if a seventh should be sharpened in the case of a leading note, if we should tune chords to the, generally, high pitch of the violin's top strings or to the low cello strings. I remember endlessly searching for answers to these questions and many more with my quartet and getting very frustrated at the beginning. But, in the case of intonation practice, there always comes one very special moment. Suddenly, the intonation just starts to click, fingers fall into place, chords ring with life. These are the moments when intonation is pure beauty and joy, the moments we live for.
Well, perhaps I should say that this moment actually doesn't always happen. In my experience, it only happens after you have treated the intonation beast with utmost care and when you are making music with people who feel the same way as you do. I have worked in ensembles, like my first quartet, where we have been so inspired by the music and by creating beautiful intonation, that it just came to us by itself. I played in another quartet last summer with some absolutely wonderful musicians and I was so surprised, because working on intonation with them didn't feel like work at all; it almost felt like more of a spiritual experience, feeling totally connected with the music in a very deep way. However, in other ensembles, intonation work couldn't be more difficult, nerve-wracking, frustrating... in these times it is enough to drive you crazy, send you delirious! For example, for me, playing in an orchestra is so hard most of the time beacuse you have about 60 people there, all playing with totally different intonation - it can give me such a headache. Largely, the schedule of an orchestra does not allow time for the players to really come together with intonation and to work at it, and the presence of a conductor almost always stops players from listening to each other anyway, as following the stick at the front is promoted as more important. But that's a whole other can of worms which I will maybe get into in another post!
To be honest, I have mixed feelings about intonation. When I find it, and find it with other people, it gives me such amazing feelings. I have never taken drugs, but I can imagine that the buzz that comes from playing with really fantastic intonation is something like being high on ecstasy! However, like I said at the beginning, intonation consumes most of my life. I can never stop hearing it, listening to it. I can't just listen to popular music for the sake of it. I can't just enjoy background music at a party. Logan makes fun of me beacuse sometimes, when we walk into a shop which has music playing, I will screw up my face because of that particular singer's terrible intonation. Now I know about intonation, I can't unknow it; it's like a beautiful gift but also a curse! I remember once teaching a young student and beginning to talk about intonation in his lesson. At the end of the lesson he said to me, 'I don't know whether to thank you or not!'.
If there is one thing I have learnt about the intonation beast over the years, it's that it absolutely doesn't care if you are a 'professional', it doesn't care if you have been playing your whole life, it doesn't care what you think you know about it. We, as musicians, must spend our whole lives taking care of it and looking for it. Right when we think we've cracked it, it shows us that we haven't even scratched the surface. It may even deceive you into thinkig that you are playing in tune, but when we really open our ears, because open ears are the NUMBER ONE requirement for good intonation, what we actually hear is far from the truth.
In my humble opinion, it really is impossible to make real music without first looking after your intonation. The beast toally paves the way for everything else, all other ideas, you might want to create, but we first need the foundation of good inotation to build upon. It is because of this that it is really worth putting time into it - the music deserves it!
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