Klarinet Archive - Posting 000297.txt from 1996/10

From: Jonathan Cohler <cohler@-----.NET>
Subj: Re: Embouchure position in clarinet playing
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 17:57:35 -0400

At 1:46 PM 10/11/96, Gary Van Cott wrote:
>I hope what has been an interesting discussion will not turn into an
>acrimonious debate.

Agreed.

>
>I tried a little experiment the other evening. I played a clarion G and
>then without moving any fingers played an altissimo note (which ends up
>being a slightly out of tune E). I wanted to analyze the physical changes
>necessary to make the jump.
>
>The movements, I believe I detected were very slight. One was a very small
>shift in the place my lower lip was pressing on the reed toward the tip of
>the reed. I would guess that this shift was no more than 1-2 mm. I believe
>that this movement was made entirely with my lip muscles without moving my
>jaw or sliding the mouthpiece.

Good point. This is exactly how I teach students to approach this problem.
The motion can always be accomplished by rolling the lip in or out a bit.
I have found that one never has the need to wholesale pick the lip up off
the reed and plunk it down somewhere else.

>
>The second change was the airstream. This is harder to describe with
>certainty since I can't really see what is going on, but I believe the air
>stream was being aimed somewhat higher then for the clarion note.

The oral cavity helps to stabilize the note. Try shaping it by pretending
to say different vowels. Each vowel creates a configuration of the
player's wind way that has different resonant frequencies. Finding the
configuration that is best for a note helps quite a bit. I believe that it
is not so much the aiming of the airstream as the different resonances of
the player's wind way that is important here.

---------------------
Jonathan Cohler
cohler@-----.net