now that you know your general pitch tendencies and have spent some time practicing how to adjust individual pitches, it’s time to turn off that tuner meter. Shocked? Here’s the thing: the tuner is purely a measuring device. It is also not usable in performance situations for many reasons. To play well in tune in the real world, you have to train your ear so you can hear whether you are in or out of tune, rather than trying to hit some target on an electronic meter. The exercise described here is the first step to gaining your independence from the tyranny of the tuner!

If you have a tuner that sounds pitches, at least one full chromatic octave, you are good to go. If you don’t you either need to get one, or you need some other form of sound generator, something that will give steady sustained pitches. An electronic keyboard or computer sound editing program might have you need.

The actual exercise is this: Play unisons for each note against your chosen sound generator (you can refer to your chart if you want or need, but don’t use the tuner’s meter) and hold each one until you can make yourself be in tune with the given pitch. Start with your lowest note, play it until it blends seamlessly with the tone. Then play the same note an octave higher, and so on throughout the range of the instrument. Work your way chromatically through all your pitches. You don’t need to write anything down unless you want to.

Not sure how to tell if you are in tune? When unison pitches match up, they should almost disappear into each other. When they are out of tune with each other, you will hear “beats,” the result of two or more tones being out of phase with each other. The faster the beats, the farther you are out of tune, the slower the beats, the closer you are.