These three terms all describe a practice technique that I use and advocate: Playing passages or exercises while a constant pitch sounds throughout. Ideal would be to have someone hold long tones for you as you tune your figures - and then you return the favor.

In real life, you may not always have a practice buddy to do that with you. There are various devices that can give a full range of chromatic pitches for you, from top end machines costing $200 or more on down to small, inexpensive devices for $25. Even if the tone is not pretty, it will keep you honest.

The exercise here is have to a pitch sounding from your device (or buddy) as you play a group of notes - a figure, an arpeggio, scale, phrase, anything really - and tune to this reference pitch. Any pitch that will provide unisons, octaves, perfect fourths or fifths is especially well suited. Seconds, thirds, and sixths are somewhat more variable, especially depending on the tonality, but you will begin to hear and tune these intervals more accurately also.

In essence, you will find yourself not so much talking or theorizing about intonation, but simply playing better in tune. Listen to this example:

Playing a self-repeating figure based on this phrase,
with the reference pitch "F" sounding.

Click here to hear what I mean

You may be aware of theories regarding the very specific intonation tendencies of certain intervals in relationship to a given tonality (i.e.: major thirds should be so-and-so many cents lower, etc. as in, "Tune those C-major E's lower!"). Depending upon which reference pitch you choose you may find yourself slightly inconsistent with some of these fine details. But - trust me - when you have improved your intonation so much that these things make a difference, you will know what to do!

For starts, just play along with the drone. To help you, I have a page of mp3 drones. You can either sound these through your computer sound system, or download them to your mini-disc, or whatever other means may help you.

Click here to go to The Drone Page