Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Intonation (music)

Encyclopedia : I : IN : INT : Intonation (music)


Intonation, in music, is a player's realization of pitch accuracy in music to oneself and across an ensemble. If musicians have "bad intonation", it means they play or sing out of tune. Intonation can also mean tuning.

Strings

In string instruments, intonation is more of a worry than in other instruments. Because most string instruments are unfretted, if a finger is too high or too low by even a fraction of an inch, the note will be out of tune. The process of gaining good intonation typically takes many years of playing to acquire and is arguably the hardest part of learning a stringed instrument.

The same principles of intonation that apply to strings apply to the trombone, being that the trombone uses a slide and not valves. However, the margin of error is much wider on the trombone as it has only seven basic slide positions on a slide length of over 80 centimetres. Therefore, intonation is a much smaller issue for trombone students than for learners of string instruments.

See also

 


From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: