Can visual cues help your intonation?

A not-so-rigorously researched response to Borem/Menezes Lage study for OJBR Vol. 10 May 2019

            In May 2019 Fausto Borem and Guilherme Menezes Lage published a study in the Online Journal of Bass Research titled “Intonation in the performance of the double bass: the role of vision and tact in undershoot and overshoot patterns.” The study is available online for free, along with a mountain of other excellent research on double bass history, repertoire, and performance practices.

            The debate over whether or not to use visual aids (i.e. stickers, dots, pencil markings, etc) to improve intonation on the double bass is no doubt a contentious one. On one extreme, purists might argue that any visual aid is “cheating” and that a musician worth their salt should train their ears and muscle memory to play in tune. On the other hand, Don’t Frets and other stickers can arguably help beginners play with more confidence from an earlier stage in their journey. A lot of bass educators and players fall somewhere in the middle of these two camps. Notably, renowned bassist Edgar Meyer plays with inlayed dots in the upper register – an increasingly common practice amongst professionals.

            Differentiating visual and tactile cues should be fairly obvious: Visual cues are marks on the fingerboard, usually in the form of tapes, dots, stickers, or pencil, that indicate, more or less exactly, where a given pitch is. Tactile cues are things like hand shape, distance, the nut, heel of the neck, and the upper bout of the bass, anything using the sense of touch that aid in getting a finger in the right zone of a given pitch.

            My playing and teaching employ a combination of visual and tactile cues, but still relies heavily on aural cues, or “ear-hand coordination” as I like to call it. Anecdotally, Jascha Heifetz’s response to being asked how he plays so in tune answered: “I don’t. But I adjust the note before you notice it was out of tune in the first place.” Likewise, a good bass player is always listening and adjusting. Developing the ability to “roll” your fingertip, with a motion a lot like vibrato, to adjust a note is paramount. The first red flag in the Borem/Menezes Lage study is that they asked the players not to adjust! Of course, this element of the procedure eliminates a variable and makes the data significantly cleaner to analyze, but it negates the fact that most professional bassists are constantly adjusting using their ears. A further study allowing participants to adjust could analyze initial intonation discrepancy and how quickly adjustments are made to how close to “in tune” they are after the adjustment. Hypothetically, visual cues would reduce adjustment gaps and help minimize adjustment periods. This would apply more to “real world” bass playing than asking participants not to adjust.

There are two main failings with visual cues that I preach: 1) stickers move, bridges move, and basses “breathe” so unless you are somehow able to eliminate these variables, any visual cue is always subject to change 2) in the lower register (below the heel of the neck in 1st-3rd positions) it is generally ill-advised to contort your spine or playing posture to see the fingerboard, as this can result in serious injury over time and affect right arm efficiency for tone production, particularly with the bow. Notably, the study did not include visual cues below 3rd position. Since there are very few tactile cues in the upper register (4th position upwards), I am a strong advocate of pencil markings (inlayed dots as well for more advanced/responsible players that can ensure their bridge doesn’t move). Pencil markings are a fabulous non-permanent solution to the main issue with visual cues because they can easily be removed and remarked as necessary. Regardless of the accuracy of visual cues, the ear still plays an important role. No matter how precise a marking is, our fingertips and visual angle are not. Finding a good setup with the double bass is all about adjustments of angles, and our visual perspective of the fingerboard can change drastically as we continue to strive for an ideal setup. Therefore, what looks accurate one day might yield worse results the next, so our ear and ability to adjust remain a most important skill to develop.

Another issue with the study is the accuracy of the Visual Cues. The methods and procedures fail to mention who is making the marks. As I said, the visual angle of the player with the fingerboard can vary widely, and unless it was the players themselves adding visual marks for the integrated trials, I would question the validity of the resulting data. Another variable is the width and location/style of the markings. Dots will yield significantly different results than lines across the fingerboard. Additionally, how thick should that line be? For the purposes of the study there is a target equal-tempered pitch, but variability in line thickness and fingertip pressure can alter the results significantly. The study’s data found that the Integrated Trials (with Visual and Tactile cues included) yielded more overshoots, albeit closer to the equal tempered pitch. This could be an indication that players are more likely to place their fingers just above a marking unconsciously because they can see it from their perspective. If the bass were flipped (an absurd visual thought), would participants on average “undershoot” the pitches because of this potential visual bias?

The concept of intonation and playing “in tune” on string instruments is also a contentious one. The study measured pitch accuracy electronically according to the standardized equal tempered system. Their argument is that it’s what would be used in more modern and atonal pieces, and that it’s in some ways an industry standard. Hot take: Good string players don’t worry about aligning themselves with equal temperament. An anecdote: if you’re in an ensemble the goal is to make music with others as well as possible. This means adjusting to your surroundings and making an effort to have your pitches fit within the ensemble, which, by extension, means that you are probably going to be playing very “out of tune” to make things sound appropriate. This is good, and normal. Even paired with a piano, professional string players might adjust their pitches outside of an equal-tempered system to make any particular chord or passage resonate more naturally according to their ears.

Picking a note out of thin air and playing a note in a passage are two very different skills. I include handshape and distance as tactile cues, but the study does not. The study had participants play a pitch, then remove their hand from the bass before playing the next one. Again, this is not typical of normal bass playing and is maybe not the best way to measure intonation accuracy, let alone draw conclusions about the use of visual aids with regard to intonation and intervallic direction more generally. This sort of “target practice” can be useful for starting passages, but one of the best ways to ensure good intonation, particularly for large leaps, is to keep your hand engaged in the string. Our brains measure the distance our hand travels and, along with a good consistent hand shape, this is one of the best strategies for playing in tune. A key component for the study’s data collection and comparisons is pitch accuracy with ascending vs descending intervals. Having participants remove their hands between pitches eliminates any sense of relationship. Therefore, claims of improved accuracy regarding intervallic movement of the hand using visual cues are essentially void. Participants could have played the same pitch 11 times and the data sets would be comparable.  Unless I missed something, ascending or descending accuracy is best measured in a melodic interval context. The time it takes for a bass player to remove the hand, then replace it on the next pitch eliminates any sense of intervallic relationship between the two pitches.

In their conclusions, it is stated that the Free Trial is “based solely on ear only.” This is a direct contradiction to the procedure, which states the Free Trial is a “performance based on the musician's previous experience, without instructions on TS or VS.” The instruction, “based on musician’s previous experience,” allows for combination of visual and tactile cues to be used, which means that the “control” set of data in the Free Trial can have wide variability from player to player and register to register.  

While I take issue with some of the methods and choices made (we didn’t even dig into their decision to only use pizzicato or the lack of defined fingering/string choices), the study does a good job of reinforcing the validity of the “middle ground” a lot of bassists and educators arrive at regarding intonation. That is: Visual cues are great starting points but good musicians should still listen to the sound they produce and adjust. It is notable that the study did not include visual cues in the lower register. Learning tactile cues in those lower positions (distance from the nut, hand shape, heel of the neck, etc) can yield great results and minimize potential tone production and health issues from the start of a player’s journey.

Also important to note: the study does not claim that visual and tactile cues should be used to replace aural cues entirely. The data indicates that visual cues can produce more reliable results. But due to variability in finger pressure, bow pressure, placement, bridge adjustments, and basses swelling and contracting, a good ear is still the most important element to playing in tune.

All this talk about intonation is fairly abstract. There are some best practices when it comes to actually working on intonation. A growing number of string musicians and educators are advocating for the use of drones. This is without a doubt the best way to work on ear-hand-coordination that I’ve encountered - so far. Whether you’re doing scales, or passage work in a particular piece, learning how every interval “sits” against a given pitch (usually the tonic or fifth) is extremely helpful in a vertical alignment sense. Horizontal (i.e. melodic playing) intonation can be improved with drones as well. The use of drones helps aim your ear at the space around you and how your instrument interacts with other sounds happening simultaneously. There’s a whole physics of sound lecture to be had… maybe for another time. Drones in conjunction with visual and tactile cues should be a recipe for a successful musician.