Violin Video Lesson: Achieving Great Intonation - Part 2

Hi, my name is William Fitzpatrick and I am the violin expert for virtualsheetmusic.com. Let's keep talking about the pitch, let's keep talking about intonation. We've spoken about one note, or patterns within our fingers for one string. Can we take it further than that?

Now, I think you see where I'm going with this. For example, let's move it along and talk about a three octave scale. Now for this one, if I'm going to use my patterns. Ooh, let's be sure we understand what I mean, those tetrachords, but the tetrachords can be whole, whole, half; whole, half, whole; half, whole, whole; whole, whole, whole. I mean they are limited, what we can do. In a very funny way we can do half, half, half, but that's not very practical with our four fingers. Or we could do half, whole, half, which was that harmonic minor scale.

Now, what happens if we play a major scale? On the G string, it's half, whole, whole; whole, whole, whole on the D; whole, whole, half. But we're going to shift after three whole, whole, whole; whole, whole, half, but we're going to shift after two. And then, shift again whole, whole, half. Why? With those tetrachords now, go with the idea of those patterns we can describe, define a three octave scale.

Now before we move on, are we understanding what I'm saying? These patterns, if I play a B flat major scale, what if I want to play B major? It's the same thing, half, whole, whole. C sharp, D, it's absolutely the same pattern. If I'm doing the same fingering, of course, which I advise my students to do.

Now because of what we just did with tetrachords in bringing them over, and they're becoming patterns between our fingers, we now have a better way of understanding how that affects pitch, how that affects our intonation. And we can start to get even closer with our pitch in our pieces.

What if I played a E flat and a C? We have a major sixth, but if you look at it with your fingers it's actually just a whole step. Visually, we're looking at a whole step, so I can sort of dispense with the need to say it's a major sixth because I know that's a whole step. Or what about ...? I can see it's a half step. What we're doing is we're taking that two-dimensional one string idea and projecting it into something, which I call three dimensions. We're looking at it across the board. In other words, if I wanted to play an E flat, and a G on the E string, why it's a whole step or it's a half step. I can start to see the relationships from one string to another.

Not only can I do that, but let's say I wanted to play an A, a G, and a C, if I play them, in fact, what I'm looking at is a whole step and a half step. My pattern is whole step, half step. If I pull the G over that half step from my second finger, and pull my second finger in the same spot over to the A string, I have that pattern.

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