Play along scales: G major

There are two great ways to work on tuning your scales. One is to use a drone and carefully find the best-sounding place for each note (playing very slowly). Another is to match your teacher as they play. Here you can do both.

Tips for tuning

• Keep listening to each note intently until it feels right, it locks in with what you hear. This means listening to your instrument and the sound you are matching equally, without losing one or the other. (One ear for each, I like to say!)

• Try not to adjust your finger by sliding (unless it is extremely far off) but rather by rolling your fingertip in flatter or sharper direction. Here is a subtle note on rolling— I have noticed that rather than using your wrist only, you may actually want to swing your elbow to make adjustments, that way your wrist won’t move too far from its normal position...

• It is a good exercise not to adjust too fast, but instead to listen and try to tell if it’s too high or too low in a very conscious and deliberate way, before fixing. This can be hard to force yourself to do! But I often hear students adjust too fast and too much, so taking time to think first will make sure you’re not going wild, sliding about hoping to find the right sound. (In a performance situation, of course, we disguise our little adjustments as much as we can.)

• Try to memorize how your finger, wrist and arm feel when you have the notes in good tuning. This helps you find it again next time. If you can imagine in detail how your body will feel playing each note, you have done well creating a model in your brain for each note.