What is your strategy to play all trumpet notes in tune?

[MrOlds]

Dude. You are the instrument. Just play in tune.

[Bill_Bumps]

[Crazy Finn]

Hear the notes in tune, play the notes in tune.

If you're playing with a tuner and the notes aren't in tune, that's because you're not hearing them in tune before you play them.

It's not a mechanical thing (probably) or a design thing or a horn thing. Sure, there are horns that have more severe tuning issues - like my Benge with it's 4th partials. It might be a slight deficiency with the horn, but the horn isn't playing the notes, it's me. So, I have to make it work - which I do (most of the time).

If you are sitting, playing your horn with a tuner and noticing that stuff isn't in tune, that's only one step. Then if you just try to get those notes in tune with the tuner and think that you have fixed the problem, you haven't. All that you've done is play a note in tune with the tuner, at this time. Will you play it in tune later, without the tuner? 20 measures later, will it still be in tune? If this is all you've done, probably not.

A tuner is there to give you a barometer. Use it to tune the pitches in your mind - with the horn. After a while, you will (hopefully) hear those pitches in tune and then they'll come out in tune. Then you can use the tuner to confirm things. You go along and a note will be uhh... not right. Is it sharp? Pull out the tuner. Check. Yup, it's sharp. Imagine the note lower - in tune. Maybe use the tuner to play the pitch. Close your eyes. Play it again. Does it sound in tune? Check it. If it's in tune, then keep playing it over and over until you really hear that note were it should be. If not, try again until you get there.

Also, the tuner gives you the illusion that it's the final word on pitch. It's not. If you're playing in a group and you're in tune as far as your tuner goes, but not matching the section and/or ensemble, you're wrong. You need to use your ears. That's why you use the tuner to calibrate your ears and your brain, not your horn. Sure, you might have a adjust a slide or how far you are moving a slide, but that's just to make playing that note in tune easier, it doesn't actually make the note come out in tune. That's on you.

Anyway, that's what I was taught, over years - and how I approach it.
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LA Benge 3X Bb Trumpet
Selmer Radial Bb Trumpet
Yamaha 6335S Bb Trumpet
Besson 709 Bb Trumpet
Bach 184L Bb Cornet
Yamaha 731 Bb Flugelhorn

[Andy Del]

[VetPsychWars]

Are you worried about playing "in tune" when you play alone?

Because "in tune" when you are alone really isn't all that relevant. It's when you play in an ensemble that "in tune" matters and you use your ears and experience to play in tune with the others.

Tom
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1950 Buescher Lightweight 400 Trumpet
1949 Buescher 400 Trumpet
1939 Buescher 400 Cornet
GR65M, GR65 Cor #1

[dershem]

[Vin DiBona]

This is what one the greatest players to ever live said about tuning.

When a note sounds beautiful, it is in tune(and vice versa)
Approach on the lines of good sound and intonation will come there too. The ear will do all the work if you let it.
Bud Herseth

R. Tomasek

[cheiden]

[mike ansberry]

I have been playing trumpet since 1963. I am a good player, but not a great player. I went to college on a trumpet scholarship and grad school at North Texas. I played in the lower level jazz bands there. (not great but a LOT of students didn't make any jazz band)

I have at times struggled with playing in tune. When I was in a slump, the harder I tried to listen and adjust, the worse things got. I was constantly listening and trying to adjust the pitch. It also cost me endurance doing this.

One day in the 1990s I was playing a church gig in a brass 5. We were cruising along pretty well and I noticed that we were very in tune. This led me to analyze what I was doing. I discovered that I was not listening to myself and analyzing my pitch, I was simply singing my part in my brain while I played. This process is called audiation.

For many years teachers had told me to sing through the instrument. I never could understand what they meant. But then suddenly I understood. I started teaching audiation to my band students. WOW! What a difference maker it was for them.
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Music is a fire in your belly, fighting to get out. You'd better put a horn in the way before someone gets hurt.

[Jaw04]

[kevin_soda]

Listen for resonance, then check with a tuner. Most often, if you're sound resonates, it is in tune.
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Kevin

[cheiden]

[JayKosta]

[kehaulani]

[Jaw04]

[kehaulani]

@Jaw04 - did the player(s) with good tone, but who did not play in tune with the piano, play in tune with themselves?
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"If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." Bird

Yamaha 8310Z Bobby Shew trumpet
Benge 3X Trumpet
Benge 3X Cornet
Adams F-1 Flghn

[kevin_soda]

What about those guys who play with a tuner clipped to the bell? They're always in tune, regardless of where the group is, and regardless of their tone quality... Truly on their own.
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Kevin

[Jaw04]

[kehaulani]

[cheiden]