Klarinet Archive - Posting 000054.txt from 1998/01

From: "Lane White" <lanewhite@-----.com>
Subj: Re: rapid fingering help!!
Date: Fri, 2 Jan 1998 21:12:53 -0500

>Hello All!
>I've been making my fingers very tight and forcing them down, rather
>than moving them naturally, but that doesn't seem very right to me.
>After doing that for an hour, I have to stop, due to the fact that my
>knuckles are sore. Now that can't be right, don't you agree? If anyone
>can help me with these difficult fingering parts, it would be greatly
>appreciated!

What Dee said. I'll only add that I earned many S&E and All-State medals
in my high school daze by not practicing (or performing) faster than I
could play cleanly. If I was at tempo by audition day, great, if not, I
was still clean, which beat most of my peers, who were neither clean nor
particularly fast. Look at it this way: if you were going to play this
for an audience in recital, do you think they would notice it more if
you were 10 or even 20 clicks below tempo, or if you were goofing half
the runs? Most judges think the same way.

Also, one thing I finally realized is it's not your fingers. Think about
this. Can you do a simple scale at the tempo indicated? If so, then raw
finger speed, getting them up and down, is not the problem. Think about
how fast your fingers move when you trill, for that matter. The problem
is caused by wasted fractions of seconds while your brain figures out
which fingers to move. Practice at reasonable tempos will bring those
delays under control, and then you'll be surprised how quickly the
speeds ramp up.

Good luck!

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