All bloke thinks about is tuning.

[bloke]

I shared with @bloke a video of recent Easter rehearsal in which I used the Packer Eb. (I’m still not the finest sight reader of bass clef on Eb). After going back and listening to it, I should probably issue a public apology to Joe, as the intonation was not up to my standards (no fault of the instrument).

Doc (not trying to offend the intonation-only guy)

Sometimes we're working under difficult circumstances. I listened to a little clip of two years ago Easter. Some of the tuning didn't sound good to me compared to previous years at the same place with most of the same people. It was a really bad quality live stream of the service, but I could hear enough to hear intonation.
A few days ago, I listened to a little bit of this year's, and I didn't hear any problems with intonation - whether I was playing the euphonium or the tuba. I finally realized that this year the trombone player was the one who usually plays the gig, and last year was sort of a sub.. if there can possibly be a sub for some gig that only happens once a year. The trumpets were great both times the horn was just fine both times, but the trombone was different. The tuba trombone intonation thing can really be great or otherwise it can wreak havoc... don't misinterpret this at scapegoating, or claiming that my playing/tuning is flawless.
That having been said, when the organ is predominant, I'm going to tune to the organ - no matter how goofy its tuning system may be - as some of them are pretty darn goofy - and I'm going to hope that the rest of brass players do the same.

trombones:
Thankfully, I rarely have to work with those as I will describe subsequently, but I believe that there are trombone players who play by feel/sight - looking at and feeling their slides, and their visual of their slide is way more significant to them than what they are hearing with their ears.

... once I've depressed a valve or two and maybe pulled a slide, I'm still not going to trust that the pitch is going to be true.

[Mary Ann]

When I was playing guitar, which I stopped because ergonomically it kills my back and neck due to the playing position -- I also tuned it based on the key of the piece I was playing, if the piece stayed in that key, and did a "tempered approach" with all the chords that lie easily on the fretboard, to get all of them as close to being in tune as possible. On my guitars, this always deviated somewhat from the tuning based on beatless harmonics.

One of the reasons I like Leo Kottke is because he knows how to tune a guitar, and he won't start playing until it is in tune.

I don't think anyone can get anywhere on a brass instrument without having a pretty good idea of where the pitch is they are going for, and I also know there is evidence out there that people can memorize pitches. Which is different from those who could tell you the name of any note played "out of nowhere" with no previous pitch reference, from a very young age. (And yes it is obvious just like the color blue is obvious; you don't wonk around in the rainbow trying to see which one it might be; it's just blue.) I also think that along the way when learning a brass instrument, one of the skills acquired is a somewhat unconscious memory of what has to be done physically to get pitches such that they become instantly accessible. Your body just knows how to do it and does. You can sit down, pick up any key of tuba, and play F below the staff out of nowhere as long as you have the right valves down, and sometimes even if you don't. ALL tuba players can do this, or they can't play tuba.

In the recent past I was astonished when someone I know who has a couple of PhDs on woodwind instruments, took up horn, and it was two YEARS before she could find the right partial. Tuner on stand for that length of time to tell her where she was, and she couldn't hear it -- would go along through the whole phrase without realizing she was on a lower partial than that called for. Blew me away that someone who was THAT GOOD on a woodwind could be so utterly lacking in what I considered a mandatory skill for a musician. As an aside, that is something that just cracks me up about playing oboe -- if you have fingers down and can blow, the thing plays, basically all by itself. Not necessarily in tune but with the pitches that go with the fingerings. Violin -- nope you have to have the fingers in very reasonably the right place, not just covering up holes here and there, before it does not sound like a cat in heat.

[bloke]

I don't want to say too much and give too many specifics but I had an ensemble hire a second tuba player for something not too long ago. It was a so-called modern piece and three different times we had 16th notes together that were a half step apart, and each time the pairs of pitches were a half step higher. I was told by them that they played by feel, and I didn't say anything. After the first couple of times through I felt obligated to point out to them that they were playing a third below me, rather than a semitone below me, I tend to think that the "feel" thing isn't a very good idea, whereas what I do - which is two know the pitches - from playing them and listening to them tens of thousands of times - seems to do well for me. Okay, my E or F or whatever way up there might be 10 cents sharp - due to the wind instrument's tendencies and maybe even my own physical weakness, but at least it's a damned E or F and not a C sharp or D-sharp or something.

I find it interesting that people seem to know so much about how other people perceive things when they may or may not perceive those things themselves. The same thing goes for when people seem to disagree about something yet they actually agree. Their minds working different ways and they come to the same conclusion as someone else, but they don't like the way that the other person came to the conclusion, so they decide to disagree with them.

Music is aural. There really aren't any very good shortcuts around acute listening and acute listening awareness.