Klarinet Archive - Posting 000510.txt from 1998/07

From: masiello@-----.com
Subj: Re: [kl] Sliver or side (Was: remove Eb/Bb key L.H)
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 19:32:50 -0400

Regarding the left hand sliver key:

Normally I lurk, but this is a topic that is one of my pet peaves.
The LH sliver key, I feel is essential to teach young players. Too often,
at advanced levels, I have seen students with little facility with this key
and therfore limited technique. With my students, I use this approach: 1.
use the LH sliver for all chromatic and most step wise passages (i.e. moving
from e flat to d etc.).
2. use the RH side key for most trills and skips.

If these two points (I won't call them rules!), are followed for
most situations, the results are excellent. Of course there are always
exceptions, but, I find that not only does this approach help clarify the
use of these keys, it also helps the student with a sign post every time
he/she sight reads a new piece.

Best regards,
Tony

At 12:48 PM 7/18/98 EDT, you wrote:
>In a message dated 98-07-18 11:44:50 EDT, fredj@-----.edu writes:
>
><< I don't "condone" the idea but I don't recomend that my students use the
> sliver (AKA Banana) key. I find that in fast passages it is ergonomically
> inefficient compared to using the RH index finger key, which is operated
> by a much more facile finger at a more comfortable angle. It may seem
> counterintuitive at first to use that key but it soon proves to be faster
> (not to mention that trills are enormously faster and easier, and that
> going from uper register G to Bb is impossible the other way).
> I have found the banana key to be useful on occasion so I guess I
> wouldn't advocate removing it but I still don't teach its use to my
> students. >>
>
>I absolutely, strongly, and one hundred percent disagree, Fred. :)
>
>I find the sliver key to be extremely ergonomically efficient, at a perfect
>angle and in chromatic passages to be much more efficient than the side key.
>In diatonic passages, the side key often works better.
>
>I think the slivers are often thought of as harder, merely because they are
>taught later or used less, and therefore are less familiar to the fingers.
>Period. (So by not having your students use them, you are in a sense
>perpetuating the very reason they're thought to be less efficient.)
>
>If both keys are worked equally, neither is more comfortable, faster, or
>better in terms of ease of use and position to the hand. It is merely a
>matter of which works in a given passage: Sliver for chromatic and side for
>diatonic. (Or whichever works best in an odd combination of both.)
>
>Except of course if the player's fingers are big, and using the sliver covers
>adjacent holes or pushes down on rings, causing the note to be flat.
>
>Teri Herel
>
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