Top Tuning Tips for Clarinetists
How do you tune a clarinet? (Fill in your favorite punch line)
Clarinet tuning can be tricky! After all, we have so many variables which can affect tuning, from temperature, reeds, barrels, and more.
I’ve written several articles throughout the years on clarinet tuning, and I want to share my top tuning tips to help you play more in tune on the clarinet.
(Before you read this article, I suggest reading my Complete Guide to Clarinet Tuning for an in-depth understanding of clarinet tuning. You might also like my Common Clarinet Tuning Mistakes.)
Let’s get started! Here are my top tips for clarinet tuning:
- Tune with your ears, not your eyes. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see musicians (not just clarinetists) making. They become reliant on a tuner and consequently don’t develop their ears to listen for tuning discrepancies.
- Don’t tune too soon. Wait until you play for a bit before tuning, as this will give you a more accurate reading. As your warm air moves through the clarinet, your pitch will rise.
- Tune based on trends. If you adjust for one note, you might fix that one note, but you’ll make several others out of tune.
- Know your tuning tendencies. Each instrument and player has their own unique tuning tendencies. Once you are familiar with yours, you can anticipate and resolve any tuning issues before they happen.
- Learn to adjust even when you’re “right.” When playing with other musicians, even if you’re spot-on in tune, you’re wrong unless you match the other musicians.
- Use breathing to your tuning advantage. This is one of my favorite tuning tips! Breathing will affect the pitch, so why not use this to your advantage?
- Know that tuning is constantly changing. Just because you were in tune yesterday (or even one minute ago) doesn’t mean that you’ll be in tune now or in the future. It’s important to train your ears so you can constantly listen and adjust to yourself and other instruments.
Happy practicing!