So, how can I teach myself good intonation? I thought about this very hard and came up with two ideas. I invented (I think ) an exercise where I place my electric tuner on my fiddle’s scroll, and practice playing scales very slowly. Very slowly. Up and down the scale. Key of C and key of G mostly. Two octaves. And doing so while using as few open strings as possible. I do this for about 15 minutes in my practice session. The second thing I figured out was a little device called a “fine tuner”. Oh, I had one on the E string. Only. I noticed that most professionals just use one and on that single string. Problem with this is that my old fiddle probably has out of round peg shafts and peg holes: It is hard to tune (something I will alleviate soon).  So when I tune up, sometimes, most of the time, other than the lucky E string, the others I content myself to just get in the ball park. Problem with this is now that I am doing more and more double stops, and some in second position, I need to know exactly where to plant my finger, and on the first try. I cannot just compensate for bad tuning with my fingering. My fiddle has to be tuned exactly. (What a revelation, huh…Duh!) So, I put fine tuners on all 4 strings. And I use them.

Between the tuner/scales exercise and the addition of the four fine tuners my intonation has improved, and my teacher has commented to that affect. I explained to her what I am doing, and she nodded approvingly.