I like the principle of 'if we're going to be wrong, let's all be wrong together'. For me it perfectly describes how you should approach playing with others.
Absolutely great 👍 👌 👏 so clear and simple, without any disturbing ego; just constructive, helpfull: a real maestria. Fantastic!!!!! Thank you so so so much!
I surely hope you'll make more episodes on this ever confusing subject. To my ear some players sound fine despite not quite accurate intonation. Oistrakh would be an example. Others sound minutely irritating despite being accurate. There must be some formula there but I never worked it out. I think it is related to how individuals listen to what is coming out from the violin and I would be very curious what you think about this. Another issue is how is the vibrato overlapping the note. Higher, lower, centered ? Many, many thanks !
Thank you for this video! I visited London from Japan 4years ago for sightseeing. I enjoyed your Tchaikovsky’s violin concert with London philharmonic orchestra. I was so impressed. Since then, I support you!
When I was in my university orchestra, one of our French horn players simply did not understand this at all and refused to play anything other than the intonation her tuner gave her for a certain section of music. She and our conductor got into it during rehearsal over this issue when she was clearly playing out of tune with the orchestra and kept denying that she was out of tune. She ended up leaving rehearsal that day.
It was helpful in raising an awareness of additional things to worry about when playing with others! 😂. Thank you Augustin! I was so looking forward to attending your concert tonight in St. Petersburg with The Florida Orchestra. Hope you will visit us someday when this pandemic is over. Please keep safe and be well. 🙏🏻
A vexed issue… I remember Perlman’s story, of one of his teachers once asking him: “Itzhak dear, what is your concept of this F-sharp?” (rather than telling him that he was flat or sharp) 😉 Intonation is indeed no Absolute -which makes our job as string players (or singers or wind players) sooo hard and so exhilarating… (Jacob Collier has a few things to say on this as well.) Then there is the issue of how to make each note on our instruments sing and reverberate in the best possible way. The intonation issue, its possibilities and limitations, extends endlessly in every direction, I feel. Thank you for this, Augustin 🙏
Very helpful! I especially have trouble hearing the intonation of the F that you played (on the A string). I'm always second guessing when I play it. Now I'm going to practice with the piano backing track to hear how it should be tuned ^^ Thank you!!
Thanks for all the videos you are making Augustin. It would also be great if you covered topics like posture and in general how your whole body comes together when playing because it's a topic not a lot of people talk about and it's an issue that afflicts novice and advanced players alike.
Thank you for making this video! If you have time, could you make a video on how to make position changing unnoticeable? How does the left hand prepare for such thing? How does the right hand contribute?
interesting phenomenon - first chord of Saint Saens B minor, 3rd mov - if you play the low E in tune with the open G, then the B is not a perfect 4th with the open E, and if you adjust to be a perfect 4th, then the low E is sharp relative to the open G. my solution is just roll my 1st finger sharp a bit when breaking the chord, so both the bottom two and top two notes are both in tune.
So the concept of "in tune" is only a relative thing. There's no Absolutely "in tune". Like living or working with other persons, one has to adjust oneself to others for being "in tune" in lives and works!!
Absolute universal half ton exists. If you use this half ton, all your intervals become different than pure! Only the unison stay perfect. Nobody talks about or the intonation problem is still present...
Thank you so much for this helpful videos.❤❤❤ I would like to know more about double stops Intonation and in the first position at thirds my left hand hurts because of wide spaces between notes. And also I want to know how can I practice my right arm moves from the frog to the tip of the bow. Thank you in advance 😍
First of all sorry for my english. Can you make a video about holding the violin correctly? Because when I play something like Bruch Concerto or Bach E Major Prelude my neck, right arm and shoulder start to hurt. I try to relax but I can't
Thank you very much. As a child in the 70ies and 80ies my teacher forced me to play every tune differently. This is absolute nonsense, not only because of the 4 strings, which are always tuned the same. There are 24 tunes. Ergo, each tone has 24 different frequences/places on the fingerbord - multiplied with all the tones of the violin... this is completey insane. Nobody can remember and if you play with a piano you sound always wrong. Furthermore, the brain can not remember one and the same tone played with 24 different frequencies/places. Some years ago, when I started playing again, I questioned everything I have "learned". Only by chance, nobody told me, I discovered that my modern metronome displays every note. From that moment on, I only played “absolute” tones that matched the piano, for example, but also the wind instruments, guitar and all non-string instruments. I always practise with a metronome. When I play freely, I use my ear as a guide.
Perfect scale practice would help, right? 3rds, 4th, 5th, 6th, Octave, Fingered Octave, 10th and Regular scales and arpeggios. My God so much to practice. Do you use Carl Flesch Scale system for practice? Heifetz suggested to practice the 3rds first.
But Augustin what do you mean when you say “in tune relative to the open string”? beginner here, I feel I can learn a lot from your videos, tell me more pls!
Pythagorean Just Intonation is True Intonation, the end. It is really that simple. All else is confusion. Just make sure to tune according to the proper spelling of the notes in the score (unless there is a misspelling). Check out some of the videos on my channel for audio examples with sheet music onscreen. Octaves are 2/1 ratio, and pitchclasses are obtained via the 3/2 ratio. Yes, even for chords True Intonation is ideal, way better than 5 limit tuning, meantone, or any equal temperament. The 5/4 is a trap, it is not a major third, it is not for tuning notes of chords or scale to.
It isn’t that simple! If you only do pythagorean intonation, and play with an orchestra with multiple lines and changing keys, it doesn’t work because of the pythagorean comma- the math does not add up. So you have to play perfect fifths and fourths only when they are noticed and otherwise somehow keep things together. By ear…
@@AugustinHadelichViolin You really have no clue what you are talking about. The Pythagorean comma would cause no problems when playing with an orchestra, even with many many modulations and key changes. There is no where you could not modulate to. The only issue is if you have a piano in 12 tet or a pythagorean temperament it could not modulate up and up and up forever like the other instruments could (in its current iteration, key word current). But yes even pianos organs harpsichords and harps and pitched percussion can modulate is many more keys than they currently do. Harps and marimba may have some degree of limit, but definitely double sharps and flats are possible, if not also triple and more. But you also must recognize that music does not modulate usually beyond a comma. Very rarely do you have a piece modulate from C major to B# major or beying into Fx or Cx major. So then the comma really is not an issue. A Pythagorean comma is a just and very musical melodic interval. We have been severely lied to about intonation and how music works and what is truly just intonation in actual music. From a labratory physics point of view, you could make an argument for the 5/4 as the major third, or in very simple music that is only in one key (even there it has issues, but I digress). But with a fully coherent just intonationsystem of pitches for melody AND harmony, it is most perfectly found in True Intonation, that is 3 limit, with notes spelled/tuned correctly. The spelling of notes is key, you could be in 3 limit tuning and be not just. The third of C major is not Gbbb, its E. Even though Gbbb could be 3 limit, it would not be a just major third in C major. That is an extreme example, but there are other places where spelling is just as important but more subtle and less obvious, but it is what is shown and displayed in sheet music. I certainly have many issues with Bach and Wagner, but they are notorious for being very consistent in spelling notes and chords correctly, even though they themselves played out of tune. The very fabric of standard notation is True Intonation, it is what is shown on the page. Less so with modern Jazz guys who very frequently misspell chords and notes, but all the big name composers of the past, almost always spelled notes correctly as they should be tuned in True Intonation. It is very important to understnad the 17 note vicinity teaching, which is widely known in the world, but for some reason is never taught to musicians and cannot be found online to my knowledge except where I have shared it in TH-cam comments. It is something baked into all music notation softwares, but it is never taught for some reason, even though it is the backbone of all chromatic music. A key is 7 notes derived from a chain of 6 perfect 3/2 ratio'd fifths. These are the just diatonic notes. But for the chromatic notes, there are not 12 as we are taught, there are 17 per octave per tonic chord. These 17 notes can appear in ONE key without demanding that the ear hears that the tonic chord has changed, either in quality from major to minor or that the root of the tonic has moved to another pitch. In C major the chromatic notes available are Gb through to A# in a chain of fifths. That gives you 5 flats and five sharps plus the 7 diatonic notes. That is why in C major you will not find the note Fb in the score, but only E. BUT in C major you will see BOTH C# and Db. You will see Ab and G#. And there are other pairs. Draw out a chain of fifths as long as you can fit on a piece of paper, making sure to spell the notes correctly, like a fifths below Fb is Bbb not A. Take note of the boudary of Gb on the low end and A# at the high end for C amjor and its relative modes. Obviously Cb Bbb Fb Ebb, these notes exist, but in vicinities which are forkeys lower than C major. Like Cb is in the vinicity of F major and its relative modes. Just remember it is the b5 through to the #6 for major. So C minor and Eb major would have the same vicinity of notes, which is why you can see Fb in C minor, but not in C major. Like I said this is baked into all music notation softwares. Enter a note and move it up and down chromatically on the staff of a given key signature and you will ONLY be given options for the 17 notes of that key's particular vicinity. If you want a note outside the vicinity you must manually enter it in, you can not scroll to it. There is so much more to uncover, but you can never get to that if you go on thinking that the 5/4 is the just major third, or that "it depends". It does not depend. By the nature of the word "just intonation" it implies a correct tuning for every given pitch name and interval, something which 5 limit or high limits cannot provide. Make sure that when you listen, to listen melodically, even when the music is chords based. Listen to every voice at once, moving from one note to the next, and hear over time how these lines give rise to chords. A man must hear horizontally as well as vertically simultaneously if one is to accurately assess intonation. If you only listen vertically, you will be mislead. Music happens over time. It is not an interval in a vacuum. Intonation must be checked and examined with respect to time as well as the vertical chords and the interactions therein. True Intonation, Pythagorean Just Intonation, is perfect in both dimensions at once, perfectly balanced. Listen to some of the examples on my channel (not the one with honey in the thumbnail that has a stretched octave). Listen to "Blessed is the Man" or "The Last Words of Dauid", as they are arrangements not only with chords but have instruments as well. Most of my other pieces are acapella choral hymns without instruments. But all songs there on the channel are chord based, and all in True Intonation, and all sound perfectly in tune. Pythagorean commas are PART of the music, but you must know when to apply them, which is to do with the spelling. But everything you hear in the audio of my videos is tuned according to the spelling you see on screen, which is not alien spellings, but looks as things normally would in a score.
Interesting ... Singers also would rather be sharp than flat. Zinka Milanov prided herself on singing sharp. The reasoning is if you are flat, you have less voice (resonance) sharp is more voice (resonance).
I have a friend who plays consistently flat. He hears everything flat. I played a recording session with him once in a group of 10 violins and the intonation was always off thanks to him. The session was wiped clean (trashed) and a week later we redid the session without him and everything was fine. I also heard him play a Vivaldi duo with another violinist and the whole concerto was out of tune thanks to him. I felt sorry for the other violinist. I think Mutter did a recording of the Brahms double with an out-of-tune cellist (Meneses?) which resulted in many parts being badly out of tune unfortunately. I heard Stern play the Beethoven concerto with the Chicago Symphony many years ago - his intonation that time was atrocious. Intonation is very, very important.
Have you ever experimented with weed to see if it would enhance your playing or creativity? If yes, what was your experience (positive, negative)? Actually, here's an idea (editing to throw this in)--it would be cool if you were to get high and make a second video of the Bach Gavotte from Partita #3 you played yesterday and compare the differences. What if actually had an effect where it was to actually allow you to bring it to a new level altogether?! Why not since your on lockdown with the rest of us, and many of your fans out here are already partaking. Bach with a Sativa would be perfect!
The master of intonation speaking about intonation. What else could you want??
Yes, indeed, what else 🙃🙂!!
I like the principle of 'if we're going to be wrong, let's all be wrong together'. For me it perfectly describes how you should approach playing with others.
In folk music performance, it’s known as "quorum tuning." 🤣
Agreed... saftey in numbers ... like " how is .language learned ?
"
Yes, that was very helpful - and generous of Augustin - to get an insight to how many worms there are in this can! Thank you 🙂
Absolutely great 👍 👌 👏 so clear and simple, without any disturbing ego; just constructive, helpfull: a real maestria. Fantastic!!!!!
Thank you so so so much!
I have no choice but to like this video
brilliant! that's very helpful, looking forward to the next one
I surely hope you'll make more episodes on this ever confusing subject. To my ear some players sound fine despite not quite accurate intonation. Oistrakh would be an example. Others sound minutely irritating despite being accurate. There must be some formula there but I never worked it out. I think it is related to how individuals listen to what is coming out from the violin and I would be very curious what you think about this. Another issue is how is the vibrato overlapping the note. Higher, lower, centered ? Many, many thanks !
Yes the importance of asking ...HOW we listen?
Thank you for this video! I visited London from Japan 4years ago for sightseeing. I enjoyed your Tchaikovsky’s violin concert with London philharmonic orchestra. I was so impressed. Since then, I support you!
Thank you very much for this very important lesson 🌼
Tonic & Dominant & Subdominant💜
When I was in my university orchestra, one of our French horn players simply did not understand this at all and refused to play anything other than the intonation her tuner gave her for a certain section of music. She and our conductor got into it during rehearsal over this issue when she was clearly playing out of tune with the orchestra and kept denying that she was out of tune. She ended up leaving rehearsal that day.
Awesome explanation -
and beautifully simplified as well.
Thank-you maestro
It was helpful in raising an awareness of additional things to worry about when playing with others! 😂. Thank you Augustin! I was so looking forward to attending your concert tonight in St. Petersburg with The Florida Orchestra. Hope you will visit us someday when this pandemic is over. Please keep safe and be well. 🙏🏻
A vexed issue…
I remember Perlman’s story, of one of his teachers once asking him: “Itzhak dear, what is your concept of this F-sharp?” (rather than telling him that he was flat or sharp) 😉
Intonation is indeed no Absolute -which makes our job as string players (or singers or wind players) sooo hard and so exhilarating…
(Jacob Collier has a few things to say on this as well.)
Then there is the issue of how to make each note on our instruments sing and reverberate in the best possible way.
The intonation issue, its possibilities and limitations, extends endlessly in every direction, I feel.
Thank you for this, Augustin 🙏
Thank You for this short cut - I so agree with you about I, IV, V and while playing we need to adjust the surrounding intonation feel and try to fit.
Very helpful! I especially have trouble hearing the intonation of the F that you played (on the A string). I'm always second guessing when I play it. Now I'm going to practice with the piano backing track to hear how it should be tuned ^^
Thank you!!
The opening of the bach c major largo (in f) always makes me want to put the f sharper than normal. This helps me understand why :)
Bravo Augustino
👏👏👏👏
Thank you sir, that was beautiful to listen.
Thanks for all the videos you are making Augustin. It would also be great if you covered topics like posture and in general how your whole body comes together when playing because it's a topic not a lot of people talk about and it's an issue that afflicts novice and advanced players alike.
bravo slatkishu
Gracias! 🎶
Thank you for making this video! If you have time, could you make a video on how to make position changing unnoticeable? How does the left hand prepare for such thing? How does the right hand contribute?
Wonderful-thank hoy !!
Look forward to the next one sir!!
Thanks Augustín!
I think you have a beautiful sound and the intonation color is very nice and wonderful, thanks for the video and sorry for my english
How much time per day did you devote to practicing the instrument when you were a student and how much time do you devote now?
Алексей Голимбиевский I think I once heard him say seven to eight hours a day when he was younger, in one of his ask Augustins.
great stuff. Thanks!
interesting phenomenon - first chord of Saint Saens B minor, 3rd mov - if you play the low E in tune with the open G, then the B is not a perfect 4th with the open E, and if you adjust to be a perfect 4th, then the low E is sharp relative to the open G. my solution is just roll my 1st finger sharp a bit when breaking the chord, so both the bottom two and top two notes are both in tune.
So the concept of "in tune" is only a relative thing. There's no Absolutely "in tune".
Like living or working with other persons, one has to adjust oneself to others for being "in tune" in lives and works!!
Absolute universal half ton exists. If you use this half ton, all your intervals become different than pure! Only the unison stay perfect. Nobody talks about or the intonation problem is still present...
Thank you so much for this helpful videos.❤❤❤
I would like to know more about double stops Intonation and in the first position at thirds my left hand hurts because of wide spaces between notes.
And also I want to know how can I practice my right arm moves from the frog to the tip of the bow.
Thank you in advance 😍
BRAVO !
First of all sorry for my english. Can you make a video about holding the violin correctly? Because when I play something like Bruch Concerto or Bach E Major Prelude my neck, right arm and shoulder start to hurt. I try to relax but I can't
Thank you.
Thank you very much. As a child in the 70ies and 80ies my teacher forced me to play every tune differently. This is absolute nonsense, not only because of the 4 strings, which are always tuned the same. There are 24 tunes. Ergo, each tone has 24 different frequences/places on the fingerbord - multiplied with all the tones of the violin... this is completey insane. Nobody can remember and if you play with a piano you sound always wrong. Furthermore, the brain can not remember one and the same tone played with 24 different frequencies/places. Some years ago, when I started playing again, I questioned everything I have "learned". Only by chance, nobody told me, I discovered that my modern metronome displays every note. From that moment on, I only played “absolute” tones that matched the piano, for example, but also the wind instruments, guitar and all non-string instruments. I always practise with a metronome. When I play freely, I use my ear as a guide.
its really GREAT! Thank YOU)
I want to cry
Thanks a lot !!!
Perfect scale practice would help, right?
3rds, 4th, 5th, 6th, Octave, Fingered Octave, 10th and Regular scales and arpeggios. My God so much to practice. Do you use Carl Flesch Scale system for practice? Heifetz suggested to practice the 3rds first.
But Augustin what do you mean when you say “in tune relative to the open string”? beginner here, I feel I can learn a lot from your videos, tell me more pls!
From my singing i often want to go to the just interval, especially the thirds---but sigh yeah. hahaha
Can you also cover bow grip/hold in the future?
Pythagorean Just Intonation is True Intonation, the end. It is really that simple. All else is confusion. Just make sure to tune according to the proper spelling of the notes in the score (unless there is a misspelling). Check out some of the videos on my channel for audio examples with sheet music onscreen. Octaves are 2/1 ratio, and pitchclasses are obtained via the 3/2 ratio. Yes, even for chords True Intonation is ideal, way better than 5 limit tuning, meantone, or any equal temperament. The 5/4 is a trap, it is not a major third, it is not for tuning notes of chords or scale to.
It isn’t that simple!
If you only do pythagorean intonation, and play with an orchestra with multiple lines and changing keys, it doesn’t work because of the pythagorean comma- the math does not add up.
So you have to play perfect fifths and fourths only when they are noticed and otherwise somehow keep things together. By ear…
@@AugustinHadelichViolin You really have no clue what you are talking about. The Pythagorean comma would cause no problems when playing with an orchestra, even with many many modulations and key changes. There is no where you could not modulate to. The only issue is if you have a piano in 12 tet or a pythagorean temperament it could not modulate up and up and up forever like the other instruments could (in its current iteration, key word current). But yes even pianos organs harpsichords and harps and pitched percussion can modulate is many more keys than they currently do. Harps and marimba may have some degree of limit, but definitely double sharps and flats are possible, if not also triple and more.
But you also must recognize that music does not modulate usually beyond a comma. Very rarely do you have a piece modulate from C major to B# major or beying into Fx or Cx major. So then the comma really is not an issue. A Pythagorean comma is a just and very musical melodic interval. We have been severely lied to about intonation and how music works and what is truly just intonation in actual music. From a labratory physics point of view, you could make an argument for the 5/4 as the major third, or in very simple music that is only in one key (even there it has issues, but I digress). But with a fully coherent just intonationsystem of pitches for melody AND harmony, it is most perfectly found in True Intonation, that is 3 limit, with notes spelled/tuned correctly. The spelling of notes is key, you could be in 3 limit tuning and be not just. The third of C major is not Gbbb, its E. Even though Gbbb could be 3 limit, it would not be a just major third in C major. That is an extreme example, but there are other places where spelling is just as important but more subtle and less obvious, but it is what is shown and displayed in sheet music.
I certainly have many issues with Bach and Wagner, but they are notorious for being very consistent in spelling notes and chords correctly, even though they themselves played out of tune. The very fabric of standard notation is True Intonation, it is what is shown on the page. Less so with modern Jazz guys who very frequently misspell chords and notes, but all the big name composers of the past, almost always spelled notes correctly as they should be tuned in True Intonation.
It is very important to understnad the 17 note vicinity teaching, which is widely known in the world, but for some reason is never taught to musicians and cannot be found online to my knowledge except where I have shared it in TH-cam comments. It is something baked into all music notation softwares, but it is never taught for some reason, even though it is the backbone of all chromatic music.
A key is 7 notes derived from a chain of 6 perfect 3/2 ratio'd fifths. These are the just diatonic notes. But for the chromatic notes, there are not 12 as we are taught, there are 17 per octave per tonic chord. These 17 notes can appear in ONE key without demanding that the ear hears that the tonic chord has changed, either in quality from major to minor or that the root of the tonic has moved to another pitch.
In C major the chromatic notes available are Gb through to A# in a chain of fifths. That gives you 5 flats and five sharps plus the 7 diatonic notes. That is why in C major you will not find the note Fb in the score, but only E. BUT in C major you will see BOTH C# and Db. You will see Ab and G#. And there are other pairs. Draw out a chain of fifths as long as you can fit on a piece of paper, making sure to spell the notes correctly, like a fifths below Fb is Bbb not A. Take note of the boudary of Gb on the low end and A# at the high end for C amjor and its relative modes.
Obviously Cb Bbb Fb Ebb, these notes exist, but in vicinities which are forkeys lower than C major. Like Cb is in the vinicity of F major and its relative modes. Just remember it is the b5 through to the #6 for major. So C minor and Eb major would have the same vicinity of notes, which is why you can see Fb in C minor, but not in C major. Like I said this is baked into all music notation softwares. Enter a note and move it up and down chromatically on the staff of a given key signature and you will ONLY be given options for the 17 notes of that key's particular vicinity. If you want a note outside the vicinity you must manually enter it in, you can not scroll to it.
There is so much more to uncover, but you can never get to that if you go on thinking that the 5/4 is the just major third, or that "it depends". It does not depend. By the nature of the word "just intonation" it implies a correct tuning for every given pitch name and interval, something which 5 limit or high limits cannot provide.
Make sure that when you listen, to listen melodically, even when the music is chords based. Listen to every voice at once, moving from one note to the next, and hear over time how these lines give rise to chords. A man must hear horizontally as well as vertically simultaneously if one is to accurately assess intonation. If you only listen vertically, you will be mislead. Music happens over time. It is not an interval in a vacuum. Intonation must be checked and examined with respect to time as well as the vertical chords and the interactions therein. True Intonation, Pythagorean Just Intonation, is perfect in both dimensions at once, perfectly balanced. Listen to some of the examples on my channel (not the one with honey in the thumbnail that has a stretched octave). Listen to "Blessed is the Man" or "The Last Words of Dauid", as they are arrangements not only with chords but have instruments as well. Most of my other pieces are acapella choral hymns without instruments. But all songs there on the channel are chord based, and all in True Intonation, and all sound perfectly in tune. Pythagorean commas are PART of the music, but you must know when to apply them, which is to do with the spelling. But everything you hear in the audio of my videos is tuned according to the spelling you see on screen, which is not alien spellings, but looks as things normally would in a score.
Interesting ... Singers also would rather be sharp than flat. Zinka Milanov prided herself on singing sharp. The reasoning is if you are flat, you have less voice (resonance) sharp is more voice (resonance).
When alls said and done it has to be 1 play with others and .......listen
I have a friend who plays consistently flat. He hears everything flat. I played a recording session with him once in a group of 10 violins and the intonation was always off thanks to him. The session was wiped clean (trashed) and a week later we redid the session without him and everything was fine. I also heard him play a Vivaldi duo with another violinist and the whole concerto was out of tune thanks to him. I felt sorry for the other violinist. I think Mutter did a recording of the Brahms double with an out-of-tune cellist (Meneses?) which resulted in many parts being badly out of tune unfortunately. I heard Stern play the Beethoven concerto with the Chicago Symphony many years ago - his intonation that time was atrocious. Intonation is very, very important.
Have you ever experimented with weed to see if it would enhance your playing or creativity? If yes, what was your experience (positive, negative)? Actually, here's an idea (editing to throw this in)--it would be cool if you were to get high and make a second video of the Bach Gavotte from Partita #3 you played yesterday and compare the differences. What if actually had an effect where it was to actually allow you to bring it to a new level altogether?! Why not since your on lockdown with the rest of us, and many of your fans out here are already partaking. Bach with a Sativa would be perfect!
Bad Beethoven you are bad Beethoven!
😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆 He is too classical to be smoking weed buddy.