TUNING YOUR INSTRUMENT
The first opportunity to train your ears begins when you tune your viola and you must immediately choose how to tune your instrument.
My favorite drone sound: DB-88
USE A DRONE
Tune your instrument by matching pitches you are listening to, not by using a tuner with visual feedback. Learn how to match a pitch perfectly on your instrument.
Tune your viola to the tightest fifths you can tolerate. Train your ears to hear the tight fifths by setting the drone to A, D, G, and C and match each pitch perfectly. While you are tuning to the drone, make sure the fifth you have just created sounds beautiful to your ear. It must sound like a fifth to be a fifth! This means you tune A to the drone, D to the drone, and then you check your D string to your A string and verify it sounds like a fifth. When you are done tuning your viola well, you will be able to play quadruple stops that are in tune with themselves, even if you are using open strings. Your C string should sound lovely with any in-tune piano. Tuning your viola properly makes it possible to PLAY IN TUNE. Until you surrender to this way of tuning your viola you will not be able to fully organize your left hand position.
INCREASE YOUR PRECISION
Consequences of starting your practice with a beautifully tuned viola:
● uncompromising pitch matching skills
● a viola you can play in tune across all the strings in all the positions
● engaging your instrument from a place of consistency and precision—tools you need in the professional arena
OTHER GREAT TIPS
● When you tune your pegs, JAM THEM IN. The more tightly your pegs fit the better your overtones will sound and the more your instrument will ring.
● When you tune, DO NOT pull the string to lower the pitch or push on the string behind the nut to raise the pitch. TUNE CORRECTLY with pegs (JAMMED IN!) or a fine tuner.
● Retune your pegs on fine-tuner strings periodically and JAM THEM IN.
● If you can’t manage your pegs SEE A LUTHIER. This is really important. You must be able to tune your instrument. Doesn’t it sound funny for me to need to say this?
● Check your instrument’s tuning 5 or 10 minutes into your practice session. Retune if needed! Since humidity and temperature can change the pitch quite quickly, you will often need to change something. I have to tune my A string (Jargar forte) twice: once when the A is sharp (cold from the case), and then again after it’s been out of the case for about ten minutes (particularly if my hands have warmed up the string). Apply this principle to changed venues. In the summer I perform outside a lot and must be on stage early enough to let my strings adjust to the crazy variations in temperature and humidy before the orchestra tunes. When I wait to go on stage shortly before the orchestra tunes, I regret it during rehearsal. I notice a change from the backstage area of Symphony Hall and the stage itself, though it is not as dramatic as the outdoors. Allow for this and ward off bad intonation by planning ahead.
● Manage your case’s humidity. Keep your case closed when you’re not moving your instrument in/out to maintain the humidity level. My luthier says that the viola itself will not change humidity drastically in a couple of hours and that the ideal is to keep the instrument at some more humid level through the dry season (winter in Boston) to keep the adjustment as stable as possible. This means I try to put my viola back in a closed case all the time I am not using it. I use a Stretto system with packets that add humidity as needed but don’t tend to drip (be very careful if you use a dampit, which can drip inside your instrument) and a humidity gauge in my case. It really helps with instrument stability through the year.
● When you buy strings, check for kinks and do not use bumpy/kinky/otherwise irregular strings.
SURPRISING CONSIDERATIONS
I recently found myself motivated to change my tailpiece to one that included four integrated fine tuners. It was a big change and I did not prefer the sound, spent a few months with the sound and the tuners and realized that I did not prefer the tuners either. It turns out that my viola sounded more in tune to me and much stabler with peg tuning than with the fine tuners. At first I thought I was crazy for having problems with the fine tuners, but I am convinced that they changed slowly while I turned them, then suddenly change, sometimes after I’d stopped tuning and started playing again. Learn how to tune with your pegs well, accept that you may not always be in tune with every other person on stage (this is just accepting real life instead of fighting against it) and move forward with the gear that works best for you. It may be four fine tuners for you; for me it’s one.