Klarinet Archive - Posting 001023.txt from 1999/03

From: "Sheryl L. Katz" <slkatz@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] doubling
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 16:02:16 -0500

-----Original Message-----
From: Marty Marks <RxReed@-----.com>
Date: Wednesday, March 17, 1999 10:02 PM
Subject: [kl] doubling

>Kevin - I have to disagree with a couple of your statements.
>To say that a saxophone player cannot play clarinet even after years of
>study and that a clarinet player can play saxophone after studying for six
>months is just not true. I played saxophone for a couple of years before
>picking up the clarinet. I did study clarinet seriously for many years as
I
>am still studying now. When I play clarinet I sound like a clarinet player
>and when I play saxophone I sound like a saxophone player. It is extremely
>rare for a clarinet player to play saxophone well after only six months.

---
I agree with this. I used to think, especially in my first few months of
playing sax, that sax was easier than clarinet. Now that I've spent a year
of hard work attempting to learn to play the sax well, I believe that the
sax is as difficult, or even more difficult, in its own right, than the
clarinet. They are both plenty hard, just different

I now think that a saxophone player brings a lot of woodwind skills and
musical skills to the clarinet, and an embouchure that has had a lot of
strengthening. The embouchure may be a bit different and not as trained as
for the clarinet, but it's not the same as starting from scratch. The sax
player has to learn more fingerings and also has to learn how to cross the
break smoothly. When I switch between instruments in the middle of a song,
the part that messes me up the most is the differences in changing octaves,
not the embouchure.

Seems to me that doubling is in itself a skill, and we tend to think of
playing the instruments discretely, yet in a doubling situation we may be
putting one instrument in our lap and grabbing another one. Putting one
down, and immediately switching embouchure, key, fingering, etc. is a real
skill and I wonder how much anyone actually teaches or practices this, yet
it's the reality in some doubling situations. It's one thing to play each
instrument well in its own right, it's yet another to play each well enough
not to mess up the sound of the group while attempting to smoothly
transition from one to another.

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