Re: Re: Re: Chronic Slide-Pull-emia!


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Posted by Rick Denney on March 21, 2001 at 10:49:05:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Chronic Slide-Pull-emia! posted by Jay Bertolet on March 21, 2001 at 08:48:19:

Jay, don't misunderstand what I'm trying to say. I said that most habitual slide pullers do so out of habit more than anything else. Perhaps I'm saying this out of the zealotry of the newly converted.

I have no doubt that you can hear your pitch and control your chops well enough to get the effect you need. And it helps to be playing with other players with the same skill, so you have a pitch to align to. These are skills expected of a top pro. But I'm a second-rate amateur, and don't have those skills or playing venues. At the times in my life when I have played in such groups, intonation was never a problem, but I can't explain why it wasn't. My best quess is that they laid a good sound and hearable pitch out there, giving me a nice, big, consistent target.

Most folks who pull slides do so because 1.) they sat in front of a tuner and figured out which notes have to be pulled which way, programmed those moves into their brains and hands, and then do it out of habit, 2.) were taught to move the slides certain ways for certain notes by teachers, and now do so out of habit, or 3.) they know from watching other players that the fifth partial is flat and the first slide has to be pushed in to accommodate it.

None of my teachers ever addressed the subject--the problems they were trying to get me to address were more fundamental than that. But I'm guilty of the other two approaches. The problem, of course, is that when we sit in front of a tuner, we are employing a feeback mechanism more precise than our ears (for most of us), and we respond therefore more effectively.

But I conducted an experiment with myself after my visit with Doug. I played all around the horn with the tuner and figured out where I needed to move the slides. Then I put the tuner away for a while and played through my practice. Then I pulled the tuner out, but set it to one side so I could not see it easily. Then, at random notes in my practice literature, I held the note and looked over at the tuner. Guess what? My notes were where they were even when I don't fool around with the slide. So, I stopped fooling around with it. Clearly, my sense of pitch doesn't line up with the tuner, and until it does, I'm just playing games with myself.

When I hear a note in an ensemble that seems out of tune to me, then I make adjustments with the slide. To me, that is the proper application for slide pulling. As I gain experience, I might realize that certain notes require that sort of correction more than others, and that might allow me to anticipate. This is not apparent in my playing at present, and partly because the band I play in has too many targets to aim for.

My York Master provides more flexibility than my previous instruments, and once I got a mouthpiece that put me in the intonation ballpark and gave me the sound I wanted, I have found that I will naturally find the pitches in my head, no matter where the slide is resting. So, I need to work on the ears and not the slides.

Rick "still tone deaf" Denney


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