Klarinet Archive - Posting 000541.txt from 1997/03

From: Roger Lewis & Denise Gulliver-Lewis <pmflewis@-----.NET>
Subj: Re: Teaching Altissimo
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 1997 12:43:16 -0500

Nathaniel Johnson wrote:
> One point about teaching young'uns to play in the different registers: I
> try to avoid using the term "break."
.............

I agree 100%. I found this long ago, when I had a summer job teaching
clarinet beginners for a school program. No problems with register
changes at all - that power of suggestion is really all-powerful.
I also (and I expect to possibly hear a lot of disagreement with this)
never mention the word "embouchure". Since my beginners are 5th
graders, this can be rather useless until later anyway. I work
individually with each student during warm-up, winds and brass alike, by
walking around and checking each student while they play their warm-up
lines. We work on correcting embouchure by listening to the sound
produced. At this age they have a hard time with a set of verbal
instructions for physical actions, but they CAN hear the difference in
tonal production and each student knows what his or her problem areas
are, and can be reminded if necessary by a key word or two. I start
using the term embouchure in the 7th grade, after a brief discussion
explaining the term and telling the students that this is something they
are doing already. This way, when working with a larger group, I can
give the general instruction to "check your embouchure" during warm-up
when I don't have the time to wander around and check myself.
So far, over only 3 years, this has worked. We have gotten increasingly
better comments on tone quality, and this year the festival judges were
highly pleased with the tone quality of my middle school clarinettists.

Denise Gulliver-Lewis
Principal Clarinet
Elkhart Symphony