Hopefully you’ve gotten used to hearing the unison tones, recognizing when you are in or out of tune with them, and are getting more adept at adjusting the pitch when needed. The next step will take this just a little bit farther. You will use your new skills to help you play scales and keep the octaves from stretching up and down.

As in the previous Step, start playing in unison in the lowest register of your chosen scale. Let’s use the F Major scale as an example. Set your sound generator to play F. Now you play the F on the lowest space of the staff and match that pitch, eliminating any beats. Now slowly play up the scale to the next F, the one on the top line of the staff. Hold that pitch and listen carefully. Were you in tune when you arrived on that pitch? If not, keep playing it until you have matched the sound generator’s pitch. When you are securely in tune with the sound generator, then play up the next octave and do the same thing with the next F. Then work your way back down the scale, stopping and tuning the F’s along the way.

If you find that you are sharp when you arrive on the F’s as you ascend the scale, and flat when you descend, that is very normal. Not good, but normal. In general, this is what flutists do when they learn to play higher and lower notes, they blow too hard and high as they go up the scale, and they let up on the air pressure and lower the airstream too much when they go down the scale. Part of the problem is the terms we use to describe the movement on the scale, going “up” or “down”, “higher” or “lower”. We react subconsciously to those words and as a result, follow the direction of the scale with the direction of the air, most of the time doing way too much. This stretches the octaves so they are bigger than they should be.

The frequency of the sound waves produced by octaves is a very simple proportion; the frequency of F2 is twice as high as F1, F3 is twice as high as F2 and so on. Our ears are very capable of hearing that proportion, so if it is even a tiny bit off, a little bell goes off in our brains that says that something is not quite right. And usually, we don’t just think that the intonation is a little bit off, it negatively colors our whole perception of how a person is playing. Because of how our ears hear and judge pitch, we want the octaves to be the proper size, whether we know it or not. It helps us make sense of the melody if the pitches are placed in good proportion to each other.

More than you wanted to know? OK, here’s the breakdown. Practice playing up and down scales and learn to not adjust the air so much up and down as you do, so as you check the octaves and unisons, they will be right on target when you land on them. To do this, you will have to exercise your ear and change the way you direct the airstream, both of which will make you a much better player!