Klarinet Archive - Posting 000533.txt from 1995/06

From: John Baetens <JSBtens@-----.COM>
Subj: Re: the best sax players
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 1995 01:33:21 -0400

Well then, I guess we all agree, the best sax players started
out on clarinet.

I guess when you are on a list like this and you get several
messages each day,. sometimes we zip through the mail
so fast that we miss the point.

Remember I said I was playing the Devil's Advocate. Of course
I overstated my case. I did it to stimulate discussion. I must
say it worked better on this list than it did with the Saxophonists.
But I will absolutely stand by the following two opinions:

1. I think it is MUCH easier for a good clarinet player to become
a good sax player than it is for a good sax player to become a
good clarinet player. I don't expect much argument here.

2. I think that as a developing musician, you will become a
better saxophone player if you start on clarinet than if you start
on saxophone. Gotcha!

Certainly some of the best sax players of all time never touched
the clarinet. They are the best because they were born with
the talent and a love of music that made them want to spend
a lot of time on the instrument. In the end, their natural
talent and hard work overcame the disadvantage of not
learning the clarinet first.
>From my own personal experience, and from watching other musicians develop, I
have to believe that clarinettists have an advantage. When I was in Junior
High School, a good friend
of mine was the first chair alto sax player in the band, and I
was in a battle for first chair clarinet with another friend.
One summer the sax player and I decided to teach each other
how to play our respective instruments. While I found the sax
to be rather easy to play (the fingering was like a simplified
clarinet and the embouchure is more relaxed), my sax
playing friend, who was a good musician, had a very
difficult time playing clarinet. I tried to show him how
to form the correct embouchure, but his facial muscles
were not developed enough. He also had to learn all the
notes in the lower register while the only fingerings I
needed to learn were the altissimo. My sax friend never
got to the point where he could even start to think about
playing altissimo on clarinet.
Now, if any of you are still here, I would like to elaborate
on my second opinion. To be a good athelete in a sport
that requires strength and endurance, such as bicycling or
swimming, a good thing to do is to train hard by riding or
swimming to build strength and endurance. But to be even
better, you should train by doing something that requires
more effort than the sport, such as weight lifting. As an
amateur cyclist, I have found that by weight training, I
can improve my cycling much more than by just riding.
I think this is what happens to clarinettists' embouchures.
The clarinet embouchure requires much more muscle
development than the sax. By "training" on the clarinet, I
think that you develop a better embouchure for sax than
you do by playing sax. Once a clarinettist learns to relax
the embouchure and form an O around the mouthpiece, a
more beautiful sound is produced than one who has been
playing sax for years.
Also, clarinet fingering is much less forgiving than sax. If
your fingers are slightly off the hole, you will produce a
squeak. I have seen many sax players, some of whom
are excellent musicians, that have a very sloppy way
of fingering with the sides of their fingers. I can't help
but think that if they would have developed a more precise
fingering style as young musicians, they would be better
musicians today. Of course, this is where a good teacher
comes in. But if they played clarinet as young musicians,
they would have been forced to be more precise.
Incidently, my other clarinettist friend, who I battled with
for first chair, took up sax a few years later and ended
up becoming one of the best sax players I have ever
heard.

John Baetens