Klarinet Archive - Posting 000426.txt from 1998/07

From: <CmdrHerel@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Tendonitis
Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 10:22:12 -0400

In a message dated 98-07-16 04:02:13 EDT, roger.shilcock=modern-languages-
library.oxford.ac.uk writes:

<< All this stuff abouttreatment is no doubt useful. Why does no one seem to
be taking measures to *prevent* it? >>

A good point to bring up! Rest assured that every single day I teach, I take
measures to prevent this!

Having seen far too many young adults have to drop clarinet in college from
crippling tendinitis simply because no one ever showed them how to move their
hands the correct way before they got to college (and once there they suddenly
started practicing hours a day - the wrong way.) I start with the fifth
graders!

Ever have a fifth grader come in and not try to squeeze the holy living life
out of the clarinet?? I stop this the first lesson and don't let up for as
many weeks as it takes to convince them to stop it.

Worse is if you get older and older kids who've never had a lesson: The
squeezing thing is more ingrained and much more difficult to fix. But I fix
it. Along with the no-squeezing, goes not letting the first knuckles (the
ones near the tips of the fingers) collapse.

Next comes the knees. We find a comfortable place to keep that clarinet bell,
based on the student's height. All the local school teachers have stopped
asking my students to play with the bell out of their knees by now. :)

As they move on and start playing more notes, I move to positioning the hands.
Both are nice and open, with kind of a "c" shape between the thumb and index
finger, with no "v's" allowed! (Ever walk around casually with your thumb and
index finger squished together? No? Why not? Because it hurts!) And the
right thumb moved out on the thumb rest. Remember, they've got the knees, so
this presents no weight problem, and opens up the right hand.

As they get about halfway through fifth grade, I can start to work on the
actual motion of the fingers - all from the back. No middle knuckle bending.
I also work to keep those back knuckles positioned high, rather than dropped
low like they're hanging off the clarinet - Makes for better leverage of
motion.

Along with the back-knuckle motion, goes wrist motion - namely none! The
wrists are straight, not bent, and the hand adjusted so that all the fingers
reach the keys easily without having to bend the wrists around. Even my
students with little hands don't have much trouble reaching the low-E key this
way. I just have to convince them to use the very tip of the pinky.

This is not a fast process. Some students pick up things quicker than others,
some practice more than others, and some value my teaching more than others...
(I've found ninth graders taking lessons for the first time to be
particularly... resistant! :)

But... I never let it go.

Don't think that I work these physical things in place of musical things. A
half hour is a long time, and I spend about ten minutes of the lesson doing
this fundamental work, using chromatic, tonging and scale studies to
accomplish multiple goals at the same time. The rest of the lesson is for
learning music!

I also encourage my students to be physically active. I like it when they
run, or play soccer best!! (I've had a couple of track stars in high school.)

This post has turned out far longer than I'd intended it to, but you can tell
that this is a very important subject to me. I got tendinitis from playing
the wrong way, and WISH I'd had a teacher who'd known and shown me the correct
way to prevent it. I lost years of time in college, and it would have been so
simple not to.

Playing the clarinet is a physical activity as well as mental, and needs to be
treated as such. Beginners are so very moldable and the amount you can teach
them is staggering. It's not fast, it's not easy, but with gentle persistence
you can give the one out of fifteen who might go on to be a clarinet player
later in their life, like you, a solid foundation.

Thanks for listening,
Teri Herel

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