Playing in Tune 3: Games & Exercises

In the last two articles we talked first about how intonation is about relationships, not about the placement of individual notes or fingers.  Last time we looked at ways to improve your hand position so you can play more accurately and effortlessly.  Here we’re going to offer some games/exercises to build good intonation into your hands and ears.  Your brain can help understand the patterns, but can’t direct your fingers to the right places; you need to build that physically into your muscle memory and your hardworking ears.

earhandLo-Hi Scale.  This exercise really gives you the basic relationship you want to get into your muscle memory so you can play both the low and high positions for each finger.   It’s video #10 in Technique Video Group #1.  Start with an open string.  Halfway through the bow, play first finger right near the nut (first circle on the Finger Finder), for the second half of the bow.  Try it a few times to get used to it, but once you do, you can just do it on the downbow, and on the upbow, again play open string for half a bow, and for the other half, play first finger in the high position (next circle on Finger Finder, a finger-width past the low position).

Remember, you are not just playing notes!  Checking your pitches against your electronic tuner won’t necessarily teach your ears or fingers what to do next time!  Give your ears and fingers a chance to compare open string with low first finger, and then compare open string with the high first finger position.  Go back and forth several times.  Don’t rush it, it’s not about intellectually understanding, but about your ears and fingers getting comfortable with it.

Each finger is responsible for two positions, low and high (a horizontal dotted line shows each finger’s “territory” on the Finger Finder).  Once you try the Lo-Hi exercise with the open and first finger, try it with your second finger.  Leave your first finger down and play 1, low-2 (2d fingertip should physical touch the 1st), and 1, high-2 (a finger-width apart), and repeat that a few times, with a good bow sound and time enough to hear the comparison of positions.

That’s the heart of the exercise — your first finger is the anchor for the others, and the second finger guides the third, so if you get a clear sense of the first two fingers, you’re in good shape.  Go on and do it with your 3d finger too — leave two fingers down and play 2, low-3, 2, high-3 and repeat, as with the others.   A few times on these patterns will do a lot for your muscle memory; try it every time you play.  It only takes 30 seconds at most.

Finger Patterns.  Getting to know scale patterns is essential to intonation, but it’s not a memorization trick.  Again, it’s all about relationships.  There is one pair of fingertips on each string that touch each other; the others are a finger-width apart.  The Finger Finder provides visual reference for this.  Don’t bother watching your fingers on the string while playing because you will either go cross-eyed or be fooled into thinking your eyes are actually helping, which they’re not (they’re really just freeloaders!).

However, the videos in Technique Video Group 4 do provide animated images of the Finger Finder patterns, and that can provide a visual complement to the work your fingers and ears are doing.  (It can also help your eyes pretend that they’re in charge!)

In that video group you’ll find the most common pattern — scales starting on the open string — followed by the second most common pattern — scales starting on the third finger.   There are also minor scales and pentatonic scales, worth getting to know.  When you experience the relationships in these scales before or during practice on a tune on those keys, your muscle memory kicks in and mightily helps you stay in tune.

The videos also include arpeggios (1st, 3d, and 5th notes of the scale) which make up a huge part of all note patterns in tunes, and patterns such as broken thirds.  Intonation being based on relationships between fingers, the awareness of how fingers feel across two strings — for example, moving from 3d finger on one string to 1st finger on the next — is essential in getting a feel for playing in tune, as opposed to thinking about finger placements for individual fingers.  You’ll learn how in some patterns, fingers feel closer than you expect, and in others, they feel like they need to stretch out.

The finger relationships are also different when going up a scale or arpeggio than when going down, so if you pay attention to the feeling of doing those things, your muscle memory will be primed for playing in tune at all times.  But it’s never something to take for granted.  Keep your ears open and your muscles aware whenever you can, and they will find the groove.  By the way, be grateful we have no frets — the pressure needed to make frets work is tiring, slow, and not very accurate!

Best of luck, and for more complete guidance, work with the videos and the Finger Finder, and keep your mind open to new discoveries of finger relationships as you go!

© 2017 Ed Pearlman

 

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