As a musician, don't you hate it when conductor, or even worse, section members call you out for being out of tune? The icing on the cake might even be that you didn't even realize that anything was wrong there. Along with a metronome, a tuner/pitch pipe is one of the most important practice aids I've ever encountered.
This is one tool that should always be in your bag, and in opinion, should be included in every practice time. The way I use mine is during the "Tetra Scales" in my warmup, by keeping the pitch pipe on the tonic of the scale. This gets the ear used to hearing the relationships of the notes to another certain pitch. After I finish all the scales I then use the tuner to actually see how my intonation is on certain notes. Kind of like a test to see how well my ears are matching the pitch pipe.
Personally, I highly recommend getting the Qwiktune tuner, like the one in the ad above. I first tried it when my horn teacher let me borrow hers for a couple weeks and they hooked me. I've only had to buy one since then, so they last and even when you do have to replace them, it's pretty cheap. It's not too fancy, just a tuner and a electronic pitch pipe. My girlfriend, who is the principal oboist at our high school, also trusts the Qwiktune and was hooked after I let her borrow mine for a rehearsal once.
Now I bet some of you are going to say that I'm forgetting all about the fancy Sabine All-In-One MetroTune
. While this does have a tuner, pitch pipe, and quality metronome all in one device, a few other people and I have had a problem with the area where the batteries go leak internal fluids. While this might just be unfortunate luck for all of us, I've never had any problems with the Qwiktune and it's still my number one pick for all my tuning needs.
This is one tool that should always be in your bag, and in opinion, should be included in every practice time. The way I use mine is during the "Tetra Scales" in my warmup, by keeping the pitch pipe on the tonic of the scale. This gets the ear used to hearing the relationships of the notes to another certain pitch. After I finish all the scales I then use the tuner to actually see how my intonation is on certain notes. Kind of like a test to see how well my ears are matching the pitch pipe.
Personally, I highly recommend getting the Qwiktune tuner, like the one in the ad above. I first tried it when my horn teacher let me borrow hers for a couple weeks and they hooked me. I've only had to buy one since then, so they last and even when you do have to replace them, it's pretty cheap. It's not too fancy, just a tuner and a electronic pitch pipe. My girlfriend, who is the principal oboist at our high school, also trusts the Qwiktune and was hooked after I let her borrow mine for a rehearsal once.
Now I bet some of you are going to say that I'm forgetting all about the fancy Sabine All-In-One MetroTune. While this does have a tuner, pitch pipe, and quality metronome all in one device, a few other people and I have had a problem with the area where the batteries go leak internal fluids. While this might just be unfortunate luck for all of us, I've never had any problems with the Qwiktune and it's still my number one pick for all my tuning needs.
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