Implant perfect intonation with Total Recall practice technique
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- čas přidán 5. 05. 2017
- Inspired by Noa Kageyama of the Bulletproof Musician, here is a breakdown of what my teacher Dan Mason used to call the "Total Recall" technique for fixing intonation problems.
The more you practice a passage, the more resistant your brain is to accept changes. That's especially true for intonation, where old habits die hard! So instead of trying incremental fixes that likely won't stick, try Total Recall instead.
In the Schwarzenegger movie from 1991, a man has memories implanted in his brain. To him, these memories are as real as anything he actually experienced. You're going to do something similar involving pitch, with the help of your own voice and a keyboard!
Don't worry: I'm neither a pianist nor a singer, but this technique has worked wonders for me any time I'm stuck with pitch problems. Once you see how it's done (it's very simple to grasp), you really need to try it for yourself. Most people experience instant results, although of course the best results come through refinement over time.
In this video, I use the Total Recall technique on the last movement of Beethoven's violin concerto. - Hudba
Please keep doing this kind of videos! We love it
This is pure-gold level advice. Thank you very much for taking the time to share!
I love that you snuck your love of Total Recall into a violin video.
I'm really fascinated by this process! Thank you so much - I'm going to try it right now!!
I was already picking pieces out on the piano to get a sense of intonation and timing, but this takes that idea to a whole new level, thank you!
This has worked brilliantly for me! Many thanks...
I'm always telling students how important practicing WITHOUT the violin is, since it allows us to develop different neural pathways to the same result which builds redundancy in our understanding of a piece or a specific sequence of notes. Great video, as are all of them :)
Amazing! Really helpful Mr. Cole, tks for the video!
Very interesting as all your videos. Thank you! I'm certainly going to try this out myself and share this with my students.
Gonna take a ego-trip with some extra credit. Thank you for your video. Gonna try this on scales and etudes for now.
Your videos are always helpful thank you!
I know the movie well. This was great advice. Thank you.
thank you so much for these tips - so refreshing and new!
wow, it's really great!!!!I like very much "creative" way of practicing and making practicing shorter, with such practice teqnique!I sometimes used parts of this trick (playing piano or singing) but never get to it like reall system, what you give here!I'm sure it will help a lot, because everything about playing is not movements we do with hands, it's what we want to hear and very exact imagination of everything we do. I went to try it out!:-) Thank you so much, Nathan!
As always, a refreshing and original perspective. As a self-taught fiddler your videos have done more to improve my technique than any other source - and I've used pretty much everything that's out there. I'm sure I'm not alone in appreciating your efforts, and I look forward to whatever you'll be sharing with us next!
Many thanks!
Interesting to say the least !! Will most definitely give it a go..... I like this video as it can be suited to less experienced players like myself. Thank you 😊
As a pianist I started to play the violin for fun a few years ago, and from the very beginning I used the piano to help me with the intonation. But I never tried to also singing with it, thanks for the tip it is a very useful one.
Nathan Cole - Brilliant. Thank you!
Great as always! Also your sound setup is stellar! not like mine :D Thank you for the practical inspiration! Getting out of the violin position during practice is sometimes such a beneficial thing to do! Singing is always a great help!
I cannot believe that ALL your tricks and pieces of advice work so beautifully...So far, I have I tried the various rhythms for fast passages, the exercises to strengthen the pinkie, and recently this one while working on a piece with lots of accidentals that I couldn't play in tune...And guess what? A couple of minutes a day singing along like you explain were enough to fix it really fast...You're the best! Thanks for putting all these videos online for the benefit of everybody...Oh, and unrelated. Was that you on Mozart in the Jungle? I believe I spotted you in the episode about the L.A. Phil :-)
Excellent video
Thank you, Nathan.
Very good tips
Thank you for sharing!
I have realized that really knowing the melody, so that you easily can sing it, makes it much easier to play. What you are showing here is very similar to that.
thankyou mr. greeting from bali island
excellent! thank you.
Outstanding! Though I thought you would have a step with singing and bowing, also. Inspiring.
Thank you SO much for making this video! I tried it with my 6 yo son and it worked like magic! He is doing Suzuki violin and loves to play fast (just like any other children his age would) and, as the result, his intonation/pitch is all over the place (more over, I'm not a musician, so it's been quite a challenge for me to produce the right pitch? Neither one of us have perfect pitch). In the beginning, his teacher would make him hum to all the tunes before he could play, but now his songs are harder/a bit complicated to hum. We tried this technique on piano, and hummed it as best as we could, and voila, just like magic, when he put his bow, all the notes were improved. I hope you'll keep making videos like this for violin beginners. Thanks again!
How is your son now?
fantastic!!!
Interesting technique... Love the name, "Total Recall" haha. I'll have to try this on a few passages in Vieuxtemps no. 5!!!
I imagine it would work splendidly! That's the last concerto I played with orchestra actually, and I used this technique for some of those spots that I had learned as a teenager (out of tune)!
Genius! Tjanks
Thank you!
Interesting stuff...I thought you were going to go for a drone on the keyboard, too, while you had it available!
Thanks for this Nathan. I have a question which I think is holding me back from accurate intonation. My wrist is slightly bending outward and I would like to know how to correct this properly. My present teacher doesn't see this as a problem, however I do. Any advice from you would be greatly appreciated. I love your tutorials by the way.
Really interesting! Would you get the same effect if you recorded the piano part so you don't have to play it manually on the piano while doing the left hand on the violin, or is that a crucial part of the technique? I often play with the piano recorded on my clavinova to help fix basic intonation issues, but never thought of it as using different sensory mechanisms to kick my brain into gear.
Wonderful advice Maestro. BTW, Total Recall is even better of a book by Piers Anthony.
how could you use this with double stop tuning? say if you're playing a Bach fugue?
On the keyboard does the last note of the figure before it repeats, the high note, sound too low to use to anybody else? Not trying to be smart, just curious.
Regarding the playing on keyboard and just fingering on the violin, won't that actually ingrain any positional errors in the left hand on violin if they were actually at the wrong positions intonation wise?
Hello, Mr. Cole. I have a question for you regarding this working technique. If I place the finger on the violin key and place the finger in the wrong place on the right hand while playing on the keyboard, won't this affect my intonation negatively? What exactly is our aim in this method? Thanks in advance :)
Good stuff. I was hoping Kuato was going to appear and play piano while you played violin.
Hello Nathan - I wonder if this would work satisfactorily with an accomplice? I'm a collaborative pianist and practice regularly with my daughter (violinist.) Do you believe that the tactile effort of playing the notes on the keyboard while simultaneous fingering them on the violin is essential? Or is that just a practical matter when practicing alone?
Nathan
Could you tell me, please, the name off this thing do you use on your shoulder?
Where could I buy it?
I thank you a lot forward.
I like many ideas presented in this video except for the one where you play the notes with one hand on the keyboard and finger silent notes on the violin. There is no way to know if what you hear from the keyboard matches in pitch to your silent fingerings. When done many times in a raw you can most likely train your brain to believe that what you finger is spot on pitch while you can be quite off. The result is you'll have your brain do the the pitch adjustment in your head, that is you'll believe that any out of tune notes sound in tune.
I think it would more effective to record the keyboard sound in slow tempo and play it back in a loop and play along the real violin with it and adjust the intonation to match it to the recorded pitch.
You can find the method at 8:00
Weird method, when you did it, you can't know if your fingers are in the right spots so it's totally useless.
Hi Nathan thanks for the video. I have a question with intonation on double,triple stops. It’s quiet hard for me to listen to the harmony, my teacher can point out which note is out of tone but I didn’t noticed that...
It might be because it's a bit easier to hear pitch further away from the instrument. I'm a bass player and oftentimes, my colleagues will tell me something is out of tune, but it sounded in tune to me. All the more reason to record yourself with the recorder as far away from you as it can be. It might just be that you need more ear training.
Ein Bratscher trifft einen Geiger. Sagt der Bratscher: "Ich temperiere. Nur noch. Seitdem ist die Intonation nicht mehr mein Problem." Sagt der Geiger: "Deine Intonation ist nun das Problem deiner Kollegen."
As a side note, Arnold plays the fiddle / violin! There's a video of him playing on CZcams :)
That's right! Is there anything he hasn't done? :)
That video is from a movie and you can tell he isnt really playing. He doesnt play violin
Hallo master..
Hello Mr. Cole. Thank you so much for another really great and useful video masterclass! It was really insightful into 'priming' a good sense of intonation into the brain. If you don't mind my asking, do you have any tips for the use of up/down-bow staccati? My teacher has, unfortunately, selected the Hora Staccato to be my next performance piece and I have less than three weeks to learn it... Even after experimenting for days on different schools of teachings and methods I still cannot get my staccati up to tempo. It would be really great if you could make a video on this topic. Thanks again and have a great day!
Ha! That's one of the hardest things to teach, and very personal. I haven't yet found the simple solution for that. I know that Ray Chen has a very entertaining and helpful video on this, have you seen it?
Wow. Thank you SO much for the fast reply! I have looked at the instructionals by Ray Chen, Ben Chan, Alexander Schonert, and Violinmasterclass (and the list goes on). They were all really good and taught me many things about staccato. None of them, however, seemed to give me a staccato at a fast tempo. I prefer to take my time with fine techniques like this but my teacher gave me a deadline of three weeks and so I, reluctantly, have to look for something with faster results.
I guess I'll just continue with the metronome and pull up the tempo by 5 bpm every day until I reach the recommended performance tempo.
For what it's worth, I had to just tighten my arm and then keep it moving. I put on the metronome and worked it up gradually. I eventually got it quite fast. These two hints may help: in the upper third of the bow, put the upper arm well below the bow hand; and around the mid-point of the bow, put the arm high and let the fingers dangle. In both cases, keep the whole arm moving!
I really appreciate the tips! I will start implementing them into my practice routines too and see how it works out. Staccato is one of the techniques I have the most difficulty with, along with the ricochet, and so being given so little time to perfect it is really stressful. It still seems to be me grasping at straws at this point though. Because of that, I am really, really grateful for any advice I'm given. Thank you!
Thank you Mr Cole for this interesting and surprising video. Would you apply this technique to difficult or weird rythms as well? (You may need something else thank a keyboard) or does it work just for intonation?
I always think of it for intonation but the same principles should apply for rhythm, as long as you could get your "violin fingers" and piano fingers to match up. The key is to get yourself hearing the new information while feeling the physical sensation on the violin.
Mr Cole i have question, what about using Tuners(Chromatic) to practice pieces and scales.
I don't love doing that in general, because the feedback (visual) is not really as precise as that which you get from your ear. I do use the "drone" feature sometimes, for similar reasons to the keyboard as in this video. But for short periods, and always alternating with playing on my own. Going back and forth like that can be great!
As ever, amazing tips! So, the thirds (in double stopping) are very difficult to play in tone; do you think that is only something about the left hand position or there is some that it makes them more hard to "feel" really in tune? (Tartini spokes about the third tone; maybe one of next tips it can be about this). Thank You
For rapid passages in thirds, there may be technical concerns that prevent you from being able to pull them off in tune. But for thirds that are moderate in speed, there shouldn't be anything terribly difficult about the finger positions. I find that this technique is perfect for that, helping me to hear the notes as they truly should sound.
Nathan Cole Great! So please leave something for that rapid passage t next time: today I'm using 1-3/1-3/2-4 for up but in rapid passage something is loosed! Thanks for Your amazing tips
MY ADVICE FOR BETTER PLAYING, SOUND, INTONATION AND BOW CONTROL - Please, may I make 2 suggestions. Practice making a tone on a crystal goblet filled 1/3 to 1/2 full with water and extremely clean finger(s); especially the right hand fingers. If you do not know how, you wet the finger tip and rotate the finger around the top rim of the glass. This will teach you pressure and speed concepts which are critical in using the bow. Secondly, practice playing - extremely slowly - two open strings at the same time until they sound perfect and beautiful together. This you need to learn for several reasons, especially for tuning. Then, do the same thing with an open string below and the 3rd finger octave above; the first level of playing a double stop octave. When you can do all these things with great accuracy and beauty, then you are ready for the next level of double stops within a one octave scale. If playing the violin, start on the D and A strings. For the viola, the G and D strings. PS - I know Dan Mason from years ago.
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@Makai Yosef You are welcome xD
Hmmm i wonder if listening to a virtuoso playing instead of playing the piano works the same way?
Nathan, I have a problem with you. You practice son filé and vibrato to make your audience believe, someone is singing. Then you make your intonation tempered. They won't recognize a cantilena any more, they now hear a sequence of tones. What do you aiming for, cantilena or the sequence?
Why do you use keyboard for your intonation??? In the keyboard you have equal temperament with pure octave-nothing to do with the pure fifths in the violin!
Thank you for that technique! I will try to use it, but I have a question. What if a piano is slightly out of tune? In this case it might be more difficult to practice this way.
I have an out of tune piano at home, just use a digital keyboard... still remember that piano tuning is not 100% satisfying and sometimes you may want to sharpen the fifth intervals or the thirds
A mandolin, a fretted instrument tuned like a violin, can be used in lieu of a keyboard.
But since a mandolin (or a guitar, as I play) requires both hands, you couldn’t play the notes on it while simultaneously playing the left-hand fingering on your violin.
Hello, Master. This reminds me of those routines that people do to separate the sides of the brain, very important for playing violin. However, I've read that the keyboard's or piano's intonation is not accurate with the violin's due to they are to be tuned in differents tunings, which are the Valotti's intonation for the piano and the Pythagorean for the violin. So don't you think that this would be a long-term counterproductive for the ear education?
I have found most of your videos very certain and useful. thank you for making them.
¿do you have any exercise for practising 3 and 4 string chords? for playing a good bach maybe.
Grasping Pythagorean
Tune the violin. If you hear the combination tone, the fifth is right.
Imagine, your violin had about ten strings more. You would tune them all in the same way. So let us make those strings in a different form ...
|---------------- E-String
|---o----------------
|--------o-----------
|-------------o-----
Try it from E-String downwards. The fouth should also give a combination tone.
|o----------------
|------o----------
|-----------o-----
|------------------ (from g upwards. Important is not only the tone but how pythagorean intonation feels in the hand)
|o---------------- (1. finger. Orientation is how the saddle feels under your finger)
|o----------------
|o----------------
|o----------------
|----o----o----o---- setup this pattern on G-String. Move it in a right angle over the strings to the E-String. Sorry, no further orientation, just how it feels right.
Now you have a definition of the tones from as to ais in Pythagorean.
If you lift one finger during playing, you can regist the size of a pythagorean interval. Or take the next empta string. So you can construct a pythagorean third and so on.
Listen to resonnances for orientation.
|--------------------- (resonnance)
|--------------------o (4. finger) (other fingers)
Dosis: 6 weeks, 10 minutes a day. Your intonation should be pythagorean now.
practising 3 and 4 string chords for playing a good Bach maybe ...
It is no matter of practising. We should't talk about chords. What you hear for a long time is a double step.
Take the first movement. It begins with a chord. You hear a long double step. In Pythagorean it sounds harsh. Now make the first finger higher until it sounds (and you hear the combination tone?) This is a harmonic third. Use this intonation only if there is a chord. Two melodies simultaniously is no chord. Melodies are nerer harmonic.
For the faster notes, melody, change to Pythagorean.
Haha when I was taking lessons I used to sing the little thing I was supposed to play to myself then play it ... trouble is I'm a lazy "ear" player and it's the written notes that are tricky for me. I keep having to use "every good boy does fine" and "F-A-C-E" lol.
You look like Clark Kent or Superman (in a good & cool way :)
Hello Mr. Cole,
I am a cello student at Artistworks and love it. I have a young son who just turned 3, and would love to start him with violin. Our family including him loves classical music. We are thinking of a Suzuki violin teacher this year, but am also interested if you think he could start with you online at this young age? Any thoughts? But even if we go with a regular teacher first, I am learning so much from Cello Video exchanges that I might just sign up as an auditor, and as we do traditional lessons, I could watch your lessons and exchanges to get technique tips when guiding his practice time. Then in a couple years after he has basics he could join you for real on Artistworks. Any thoughts or suggestions? Thank you, Daniel in Japan.
I think that's a great idea, especially if it's primarily for you in order to guide his practice time. You'll see that the curriculum leans more toward the advanced players, but it sounds like that would appeal to where you are with the cello.
Using a piano keyboard app which us handier than my piano,
get to da choppaaaa!
Or in this case, "See you at da pahty, Richter!" :)
I will practice this but on my midi keyboard I will load Arnie's "AAAARRRGHH"
😂
"pretty sure nothing will happen to me" I burst 3 blood vessels and lost a finger 😉😉
First of all your strings should be tuned to very open fifths.
Then you work with the standard keys of GDAE and C major and then the corresponding minor keys. Why do you do that? So that you can check your intonation against the other open strings as you work. For example, if you are playing a b natural on the d-string, And you want to check it, you play it with the g. If it's out of tune, there will be dissonance. You have to work with the note until the dissonance disappears. Proper international should have a very calming effect on the resonance because you are no longer out of sequence to create dissonance. Conversely, if you are playing a g sharp as a leading tone into an a string, you will want to play it with the a-string and you really want to get as much dissonance as possible. Many violinists do not play their leading tones high enough in the pitch. The leading tone is begging for resolution. It should be striving for it, much the same as you would hear in the first movement of the bartok violin concerto number one at the very end.
And you made no attempt to practice the shift. Don't do it in the first position because you're not going to play it in the first position. Do it by shifting on the g-string from the a to the d. When you get to the d, if your violin is tuned to open fifths, you will be able to take that d and play it alongside with your open d-string and that will tell you whether or not you are sharp or flat. This is far more practical for developing intonation. It teaches you first of all how to find the resonance on the violin. You could do it with the bow by using a typical Colombian grip with flat hair and pulling the bow at a 90 angle perpendicular to the strings and parallel to the bridge. But you can do it with the left hand especially by making certain that the note is completely pure and in tune. Play around with that. Take your first finger on the g string and play the d in 4th position. Once those notes are completely untuned in tune, play the F sharp with the open d. That will tell you that you need to probably be playing a little bit sharper on the F sharp. Then you play the a with your fourth finger on the g-string and you check it against the open d string again. It should be matching the same intonation as what you would have if you had played your open d and your open a, provided that they are in open fifths.
You can expound at experiment with this and make it work all the way across the table. But you're leading tones will always be sharper than you think.
Extrapolate the same idea because you can check your international on your fiddle with every other note as long as it is one of the intervals. By the time you start getting into the other keys, your information will be solid enough that you will be able to hear where your hand needs to be. This is where you develop your muscle memory If there is such a thing. It would be nice if the CZcams teachers would give more practical advice and a hell of a lot less talking. You need the demonstrate and in your demonstration, you need to show that you know what you're talking about. Even when you thought that your d was in tune in the Beethoven, it wasn't. It was flat.
And my apologies for the typos, but I'm doing this from my cell phone and the type print is so tiny, I need to get the hubble telescope focused on it so I can read it. But I wanted to get this out instead of editing because I'm not getting paid for it. Extrapolate, again.