You got a clue. Time will make it better. Also, listen closely to your first fingered note when you play. Learn to adjust to correct pitch quickly, and you will improve.

Start with the mental image, sound of "in-tune". Doesn't need to involve fingers; singing is good way. Octaves are good place to start. Then fifths, fourths, thirds, sixths.

Muscle memory helps for the distance between the fingers but less so when the left hand is first positioned.

Don't lock your hand to the neck/fingerboard; with idea about some long term muscle memory of very fine placement; let them relax, move and adjust to the ear. Constantly listening; let your ears guide the fingers, and adjust; will form short term muscle memory of fine placement. Warm up exercises are good, such as octave mentioned, but include other intervals to map out first second fingers (for example listen for the sound of b against the open e; or against open D) Keep listening as you play... make fine adjustment.

Initially it might help to use bit of idea of slide into notes... rather than over worry about nailing it as put finger down... little flat and slide up to where sounds right. Again starts with mental image of what sounds in tune.

Two things that I would consider keys to intonation:

1. Developing the ear so that you can adjust to correct pitches and so that you can tell when you’re playing out of tune.

2. Good left hand and arm position. It makes a gigantic impact on intonation because it places the fingers in the best position for you to drop them straight down. If you’re coming into the note from an angle, the likelihood of hitting the mark drops drastically. Getting the arm tucked under the body of the violin really helps to put the wrist into position and facilitate reaching all notes without strain. When a player describes having difficulty reaching a note with the fourth finger in first position, this is usually an indication that the hand position is bad and is inhibiting a normal range of motion. Ideally it should be relatively easy to extend the fourth finger higher instead of shifting into second position. For some music, it’s necessary to make much larger stretches, and this can only be accomplished with a good position for the hand (unless you’re blessed/cursed with Marfan Syndrome).

Doing exercises that train the ear, like playing scales with a drone or using open strings where possible to check accuracy can help. Singing in ensemble is a great way to focus the ear, especially because it forces you to really pay close attention to intervals and chords to get a good sound. When the chords are in harmony, you may be able to hear overtones ringing out above the fundamental on sustained chords in a reverberant room.

Playing in tune is a lifelong pursuit. Even the best players are constantly making adjustments and working to maintain or improve. Heifetz famously said the reason he played in tune so well was that he could hear it when he was out of tune and adjust before other people could tell.

Put that index finger down and bow that stop and one of the adjacent open strings at once.
Slide that finger back and forth, and listen to the finger slide into and out of tune. You'll get it.
George has a good idea to develop your intonation 'model' by singing.
Doe, Ray, Mee, Faa. So, Laa, Tee, Doe. That's called Solfeg'e if you want to go down a good rabbit hole. All the Best!

This. Exactly. " he could hear it when he was out of tune and adjust before other people could tell.". The first few micro-seconds, you eventually will be able to hear if your intonation is off, and make the tinyest adjustment before anyone else hears the note not being true.

The road to Hell is paved with bad intonation.

For me intonation has a lot to do with that slight exaggeration of the internal perspective, or if you like it emotions/mood. It's a bit like a stage : noone really 'needs' all that make up, but the effect is strong when you wear make up under the spotlights and drags the public into the story that is about to be revealed.
If I'm not in touch with my inner self, I cannot play, but when I feel close to my self, it comes naturally.

Intonation is a tricky business. As The Violin Beautiful wrote, it’s something to work on for life. I believe it’s important to pick easy pieces to work on so that you can begin to form a reliable hand-frame and also develop some confidence. In addition, it’s very helpful to listen to the tunes played in-tune so that you can internalize the sound. I believe this is largely the idea behind the Suzuki method. I find that if I’m not concentrating and relaxed, my intonation suffers.

Lots & lots & lots of scales, thirds, fourths, fifths, octaves etc. Maintain trust that, if you play the instrument enough, your ears and fingers will eventually sing together in divine nirvana.

Well, playing melodies you know "by heart". I started with Christmas carols. Using a tuner and listening carefully will help. Tune you instrument each time you pick it up or you will be learning incorrectly. Scales and arpeggios played over the relative cello tone continues to help me. I do it to this day twenty plus years in. Be patient with yourself, good muscle memory takes time. R/

YUp! That third finger - open string drone is what I use a lot to check my intonation! (Aside from making sure instrument is in tune in the first place). YOu’ll hear a lot of fiddlers hit a few doublestops before starting up…verifying that all strings are in tune with eachother, and left hand starting out in right place.

Another small off-thread point is that intonation can be flexible…I have played with horribly flat flutes/whistles where I literally shift my hand down a bit, hitting all the notes a bit low to match them. (FOr open string notes,  they’re out of luck) As their tubes get warmed up, their pitch sharpens…and I can then put my hand back in its usual spot. My flute friend is always dead-on for tuning - I don’t know how she does it, except I noticed that she keeps a whistle up her sleeve! (keeps it warm)

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Originally posted by NCnotes

YUp! That third finger - open string drone is what I use a lot to check my intonation! (Aside from making sure instrument is in tune in the first place). YOu’ll hear a lot of fiddlers hit a few doublestops before starting up…verifying that all strings are in tune with eachother, and left hand starting out in right place.

Another small off-thread point is that intonation can be flexible…I have played with horribly flat flutes/whistles where I literally shift my hand down a bit, hitting all the notes a bit low to match them. (FOr open string notes,  they’re out of luck) As their tubes get warmed up, their pitch sharpens…and I can then put my hand back in its usual spot. My flute friend is always dead-on for tuning - I don’t know how she does it, except I noticed that she keeps a whistle up her sleeve! (keeps it warm)

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Your flute friend is always "dead-on"? To what? Are you sure If put it in app like Melodyne every note played in the music would lock to that grid, like auto-tune?

Brings up point of what is "in-tune" vs "out-of"tune" 

I tend to think of intonation as a bit of a window; difference of of accuracy vs precision... how wide can vary, depending on the context of note or music, intonation system, as well as the listener (and psycho-acoustic aspects)

Certainly, there is and idea about learning to hear an objective mathematical calculated "dead-on" precision target could aim for; within nth degree of cents. Keep in mind... most analog instruments are incapable of really achieving that; and perhaps impossible with multiple instruments. But as well, most normal listeners do not have the ability to detect that precision... especially less weighted, fast short notes. Add to this the idea of temperament, which is literally that notes are not perfect, (idea was that folks won't notice, or enough to find as out of tune).

Just listen to quality is another idea. Most of the time can just use average human listener ability; which is subjective and qualitative; only needs to be within reasonable accurate range of intonation to convey the musicality needed; that it overall blends. IOW that it doesn't sound "out-of-tune". Sometimes the other aspects, melodic contour, or rhythm (or other aspects) have much more weight to the music enjoyments, than precise intonation. 

Just saying, sometimes beginners over worry about this; try to match some device measuring mathematical calculation, assume inability that they can't hear something that most EVERYONE else can, thus they don't know if they are "out-of-tune"? While certainly might initially need to work on listening for and understanding the contextual qualitative relationship (intervals/chords); but with that general understanding typically, musicians (if listening) as pay attention to what subjective sounds slightly better, naturally start having a bit narrower window. 

Oh I shouldn’t have said “dead on”…I meant that I can tune to A=440, start playing, and we sound in tune with eachother within an acceptable range (both of us played In music groups in high school/college, so I suppose you would call it ‘acceptable small group tuning’ … in the sense that it doesn’t bug us or average listeners.( I guess that is relative though, depending on how picky your ears are. )

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Originally posted by NCnotes

YUp! That third finger - open string drone is what I use a lot to check my intonation! (Aside from making sure instrument is in tune in the first place). YOu’ll hear a lot of fiddlers hit a few doublestops before starting up…verifying that all strings are in tune with eachother, and left hand starting out in right place.

Another small off-thread point is that intonation can be flexible…I have played with horribly flat flutes/whistles where I literally shift my hand down a bit, hitting all the notes a bit low to match them. (FOr open string notes,  they’re out of luck) As their tubes get warmed up, their pitch sharpens…and I can then put my hand back in its usual spot. My flute friend is always dead-on for tuning - I don’t know how she does it, except I noticed that she keeps a whistle up her sleeve! (keeps it warm)

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I'd say that in your example, intonation still remains fixed by the proportions of the intervals, which are pure mathematical relationships. If another instrument is out of tune and you're adjusting your hand to be flatter, it's a move to make it consistently flat across the range. If you're not retuning, the fingered notes will be accurate with the change of hand position and in tune with each other (unless you miss notes) but the open strings will be uniformly sharp (as you explained). But in either case, the intervals remain the same--a fifth is still a fifth regardless of the pitch of the fundamental.

Deliberate pitch bending is a different matter. There are styles where a note can be bent for effect, and in choral singing, it's necessary to be constantly paying attention to pitch to make harmonies really ring, but there you're adjusting pitch for precision. Intonation is flexible if you consider it in the context of expression, although it's not quite so flexible in harmonic context. I think this is a big part of the adopted saying "Old Time music is better than it sounds."

All true and well said.

My guess is that NCnotes not only understands these concepts at a theoretical level but also, perhaps more importantly, understands them at a practical, real world, real-time level. You know, using her ears and making adjustments in time. Of course, when she’s doing this, she’s doing what all seasoned musicians do when playing live with each other (I wish I was more seasoned :).

The fiddle is inherently a micro tonal instrument, and as such hands the the responsibility of deciding what is in or out of tune over to the player. So all you have to go on is your own ear, which after a while becomes more acute than the general population's ear.(hopefully)

I think matching the group intonation is something that comes instinctively after a while. ( There’s also the gruesome experience of playing with a community church piano that hasn’t been tuned for years…but I’ll let you that experience that for yourself :-D

Anyway yup, keep checking that you’re playing in tune! Play along with slow recordings, maybe use drones, play scales listening carefully to your pitch, just get the feeling in your fingers of where the notes sound right. It’s a slow…but important…stage of the journey!

This reminds me of one of the big scenes in Whiplash, where the professor says that a horn player is out of tune and demands that the offending player confess. He knows all along which player it is but singles a different one out and asks him if he’s out of tune. The player is terrified and says he doesn’t know. He’s kicked out of the band, not because he was playing out of tune (he wasn’t) but because he can’t tell the difference or at the very least isn’t certain enough to say that he’s in tune. Although the scene in the movie is extreme, I’ve seen lesser versions of it many times.

I hope I'm not lighting the "blue touchpaper" somewhere but I confess I have frets on my fiddle (the one's made out of fishing line or something). Occasionally, for reassurance, I'll use them as a quick reference to check where my hand is going to be or maybe the shape it will be for a particular chord. Typically I'll do this with the fiddle held down or like a uke. When I'm actually playing I can't really feel or see the frets and I forget all about them. Sometimes people comment on the strange-looking fiddle but it's no big deal really.

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Originally posted by Hector

I hope I'm not lighting the "blue touchpaper" somewhere but I confess I have frets on my fiddle (the one's made out of fishing line or something). Occasionally, for reassurance, I'll use them as a quick reference to check where my hand is going to be or maybe the shape it will be for a particular chord. Typically I'll do this with the fiddle held down or like a uke. When I'm actually playing I can't really feel or see the frets and I forget all about them. Sometimes people comment on the strange-looking fiddle but it's no big deal really.

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Funny how we would need to "confess" to this.  Not judging, it's likely the word I would use as well.  In fact, I've thought about buying a product like this and installing it on one of my violins, which I would then use to work on music I can read but have no real ability to play in tune - like Bach for instance.

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Originally posted by Hector

I hope I'm not lighting the "blue touchpaper" somewhere but I confess I have frets on my fiddle (the one's made out of fishing line or something). Occasionally, for reassurance, I'll use them as a quick reference to check where my hand is going to be or maybe the shape it will be for a particular chord. Typically I'll do this with the fiddle held down or like a uke. When I'm actually playing I can't really feel or see the frets and I forget all about them. Sometimes people comment on the strange-looking fiddle but it's no big deal really.

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Marking the positions for fingers is a common learning tool for beginning players, so it's not as though it's frowned upon. I do think that using the ear is what's most important, but there's nothing inherently wrong with using tapes as long as you're not relying on the INSTEAD of the ear.

There are sticker sheets called "First Frets" and "Don't Frets" designed to be applied to a violin (these were based on a design from decades before) and just about every public school orchestra teacher keeps rolls of thin tape for applying to fingerboards to help the kids who can't play in tune to get closer to pitch. A teacher in my area had custom rosewood frets installed in the fingerboard of his modern Italian violin fo teaching. The frets were flush with the top so you wouldn't feel them, but they were visible enough for any beginning strident who borrowed the violin to use. That violin ended up at a shop on consignment eventually, and the violin salesman grumbled to me about the frets. He said it made the violin hard to sell to a more experienced player because they made it look cheap, so he planned to dye them black to hide them.

True frets can be problematic on a violin because if they stick up they can interfere with the string and buzz unless the nut is raised. When I was working at my first shop, every time we installed a Don't Fret, we also had to shim the nut to prevent buzzing. Finger tapes could necessitate a much thicker shim. If the tapes are too thick, they'll deflect the pitch as you stop the string. If you use something to mark position, it's important to keep it as thin as possible.

There are bowed string instruments that are fretted. The viola da gamba, for example. In that case they're made of gut and are adjustable for different temperaments, although no one really likes having to mess with them. 

Brave to modify an Italian made violin like that - them things are expensive. Why not simply swap out the fingerboard to sell it?

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Originally posted by Johnbow

Brave to modify an Italian made violin like that - them things are expensive. Why not simply swap out the fingerboard to sell it?

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The shop doesn't want to pay for a new fingerboard if they can make the rosewood frets disappear visually. If I put a new fingerboard on, then the customer who consigned it has to agree to pay for the work before it sells, it has to be deducted from the sale price, or the shop has to come out of pocket to pay for it.  None of those options are desirable.

I imagine evidence of the inlays would remain. Seems an insufficient remedy if the goal is to avoid having the violin look cheap - which I’m sure it isn’t.

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Originally posted by Johnbow

I imagine evidence of the inlays would remain. Seems an insufficient remedy if the goal is to avoid having the violin look cheap - which I’m sure it isn’t.

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Since they're flush and not all that noticeable without dye, they'll probably be practically invisible in the end if that route is taken. If I were buying the violin, I wouldn't want the frets in it and would request a new board as a condition of the sale, but that's just me. 

I am always surprised at how accurate one's ear can become. I've listened to many recordings of my band's performances. While playing, I have to not cringe sometimes at my perceived out of tuneness on some tunes/notes. But I'll listen back and it sounds fine. I think the players ears get finely honed to hear when a note is off, but as had been said most listeners do not have that precision. I was not blessed with perfect pitch, but one can develop a sense of pitch. In jams or ensemble playing, I am usually the one to halt things and ask someone to check their tuning and 99% of time I am right.

I dont know how I would handle playing with a flute or a piano that was out of concert 440hz. I guess I would just retune to their A440 and hope for the best (probably hurt my ears though). Drives me crazy when I have to sit next to a dobro or National Steel player with a slide, if they don't have good intonation. Having a good ear can be a curse sometimes. Lets be honest, this Devil's Box can be a curse in of itself at times!