Re: [Harp-L] Tuner App for Bending Practice?




I'm thinking of picking up a chromatic tuner app for my iPod touch for
practicing my bend intonation.

Has any one on the list tried this. Which app(s) do you recommend (or
recommend against).

At first this idea struck me as wrong, but I'm not so sure as I think about it.


PRO:
I was convinced I had a dead-on sense of pitch into my 40's. Then my singing partner in the vonBrellas made me listen to my singing on tape, and my intonation actually sucked. I worked on it by listening more closely to my partner and much more closely to my guitar, which I keep in tune electronically. I'm told that my singing pitch is good now, though my cats are not impressed. When I was editing my CD in 2007 I found I needed to go back in and re-sing six notes, and then found two more that needed pitch correction as they had started to bother me.


The same was true with my time, which I thought was terrific until I started practicing with a metronome, many years ago. It actually took a few years before I had full control of my time.

So working with a tuner to practice your bending pitch may be just the ticket.

Sort of CON:
I've never used a harmonica that was tuned after it left the factory. Part of the reason for this is that in fact the guitar fretboards of the guitarists I have worked with don't really keep strings in tune all the way up the fretboard, so I'm always adjusting my pitch to sound right with them. The few harps I've owned (since buying my first diatonic harps 43 years ago) that've actually been in something like good tuning STILL have to be 'worked' to accomodate the pitches of the other instruments I'm working with.


When you're playing with other people your bend notes don't have to be pitch perfect. Your notes DO have to sound good with everyone else, and you'll have to accomodate them or you''re the one that'll sound crappy - they will not.

Where intonation is concerned, a diatonic harp is more like a fiddle than a piano. Many good harp players that I hear don't listen closely enough to the actual intonation of the notes they're playing against - I find it jarring, and one of the main marks of an amateur.

That means that if you master the art of perfect bending intonation, you're STILL going to have to monkey with those cents to sound good with everyone else.

NOW, if you're trying to learn how to play the chromatic notes on a diatonic harp - Levy-style - then I'm gonna have to vote that you practice your notes against a tuner ALOT. Mr. Levy has really fine intonation most of the time, but most of the players I've heard who are going off in his wonderful direction (I'm not one of them) need to work on their intonation more than any other quality.

The first guy I ever heard play a valved diatonic boasted that he could play it in all 12 keys. He could, too, only even in the easiest keys his intonation was often horrible.

Adjunct to this, many players of these chromatic notes sound like they're straining to hit them, if only for the microsecond that it takes to kill the feeling in the music. (I'm not the only listener who feels this way, though I will not name the names of the people who have the genius to agree with me.)

So get your bend intonation perfect AND effortless at any speed and you will find yourself elevated above your peer some diatonic chromaticists.





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