Violin intonation: 6 tips
As violinists (and violists, cellists, and all string players, for that matter), we need to work on intonation until the end of our lives: the violin is an instrument which doesn’t have any set intervals, like a guitar fretboard. A violin’s fingerboard is way too small to have any frets, since the space between the fingers are much smaller. But this also means that we have a lot of flexibility.
The intonation practice can be divided into three categories: single (base) notes, double stops, and chords, which is related to double stops. To avoid a very-lengthy discussion, I will talk about having a good base on single note practice, and save the other categories for another post.
Below, I will give you 6 tips for a better intonation on the violin. Feel free to experiment!
#1: Have a good reference point in your ears when practicing by yourself. Yes, with enough practice, it’s possible to have *almost* perfect intonation on the violin. If we’re playing chamber music or in an orchestra, the discussion will get more nuanced, of course.
#2: Pay attention to the resonance quality and practice having a good contact point with the bow. For base intonation, practicing scales can be a great tool (Flesch, Markov, Gregorian, Schradieck- choose one), but I’d suggest a more holistic approach. The resonance quality is the richness of overtones that comes from everything touching the violin. When you play a note, everything comes into resonance- including your bones, if you’re playing without shoulder rest!
#3: Practice having a good hand position where your fingers are given enough space, which allows them to move freely. I found that the body posture and violin hold are very individual things, and after reaching a certain playing level, one might need to experiment a little bit with the violin setup to improve the comfort level, which will in turn improve intonation.
#4: Be careful when you’re checking the intonation with an empty string. This is a popular technique for good reason, but it can also mislead us, if the empty string’s pitch is outside the tonality that we play the base note in. For example: in A-flat major scales, if we play the first B-flat on the A string with an empty D string, this can mislead us, because the note D doesn’t exist in A-flat major and will give us the wrong resonance.
#5: Having clean base notes by themselves might not be enough for good intonation. Base notes should be clean, but if you’re playing double stops, or chords, the notes will need to be adjusted to one another.
#6: This might be the most controversial one, but I’ll go ahead and suggest to not over-rely on tuners, or other devices for intonation. This probably goes against many of my colleagues’ practices and many other advices out there. But I think if you do it too much, it can make our ears “lazy”.
Anything else you’d add to the list above? Let me know what you think in the comments - and if you got value of this post, I warmly invite you to share it with your friends.
