Interval+Intonation+Warm-up+for+HS+Instrumental

Interval Warm-up for High School Instrumentalists

In many high school instrumental programs, it is difficult to keep the ensemble in tune during large intervalic leaps, especially if those leaps occur outside of the melody. In this particular case, I was having problems keeping a high school orchestra in tune as they played harmony parts with a lot of chromaticism and large intervals. We had also been trying to get the orchestra to use a more theoretical approach to the instrument, so I designed this warm up to have them think harder than they might ordinarily.

Subject/Grade: High School Orchestra (Or any ensemble)

Concepts/Skills/Values: Play, Listen

Behavioral Learning Objectives: Students will be able to play the notes in the interval progressions, as well as tune them within the time of one quarter note.

Materials: White Board, Instruments

Sequence of Activites:

Prepare the board ahead of time by writing which key you will be using, in this case I used G major, as well as the numbers 1-7, and the following patterns:

1_ 12345

2_ 13572

3_ 14736

4_ 15263

5_ 16427

6_ 17654

7_ This is awesome so far, but how will they know whether to go up or down? Did you clarify it to them before each pattern which direction you wanted them to go, or did you just have them use their own discretion? -Gary S

These patterns are simply ascending intervals.

1) When the students are ready to play, have them play a chromatic scale beginning on the root of the key you are using, followed by a major scale. This is to get them thinking about the pitches in the key, so make sure each note is in tune.

2) Next, have the students identify each scale degree and write them on the board next to the first set of numbers.

3) Play the first pattern up and down using quarter notes, this should be easy as it is simply stepwise motion. The second pattern will probably lose a few people, so take it note by note. They should be taking the second scale degree on the upper octave. As they learn the notes, start putting the pattern in time; first in half notes and then on to quarter notes. Repeat this for the next patterns. At some point it becomes impractical to continue jumping each interval up, so at this point it is up to the students discretion to decide when to go up.

Lesson Reminders: This warm up is all about intonation, so make sure every single note is in tune before moving on. If you get the students thinking about how they sound in context with the ensemble, they should improve their expectations for full group sound.

This is a really good and appropriate lesson, as I'm finding the same problems with the groups I've been working with. My question to you, is how do you define what is "in tune"? Is it just the ensemble agreeing on the pitch, or is there a listening point somewhere (maybe a tuba with a tuner in front of him/her)? Perhaps you utilize a tuner with one of your better tubas (or whatever instrument you choose to use), or maybe you could pass the tuner around, thus changing the listening point and making the students listen to different timbres and voices in the ensemble. The first time you introduced this, you said you had students identify each scale degree to a note. In sequential lessons, would you leave the note names off the board, or would it be more effective to gradually get away from the "crutch" of having them on the board? Just a few suggestions. Looks like you've done a lot of work with this, and it shows. I could see this being very effective in a classroom setting. -Gary S

Gary, I was using my section leaders as a listening point for the pitch, but i like your idea of passing around a tuner. Particularly with the orchestra, I thought it was really important for the students to hear the pitch ahead of time, so I started having them sing the next pitch before playing it. I think having the tuner will give them a good baseline for this.