Intonation Instructional Video

The challenge

Developing instrumental musicians often find it hard to tune their own instruments. Teachers explain what to listen for and how to adjust, but a normal rehearsal schedule leaves little time to practice hearing whether you are sharp or flat. Hearing your own pitch inside a full ensemble is an advanced aural skill that needs specific practice. I wanted a short video that explained the concept and also let viewers practice the skill and assess themselves. It was also a chance to make extensive use of Premiere Pro and After Effects.

What I made

I started with a storyboard covering on-screen graphics, motion, animations, dialogue, and the practice and final assessment segments, along with how audio and video would be layered and cut together. With dialogue and pacing planned, including voiceover and B-roll, all the raw footage was filmed in bulk. Most of the work happened in Premiere Pro, where I cut the footage together and added audio. The hardest segments were the activities: rapid cuts between images made in Photoshop, paired with test tones made in Audacity, give the effect of an animated, interactive “assessment board.” I used After Effects for simple motion graphics and the audio waveform at the start of the video.

What I learned

Detailed planning paid off. I knew how I wanted the video to look and sound before writing anything down, but completing the storyboard settled which shots to take and which test tones to record and save. I also gained a lot of experience pairing video and audio and using keyframes and motion graphics to illustrate ideas. Test viewers gave me feedback on audio levels, especially the balance between music and voiceover, and that balance still has room to improve.