Klarinet Archive - Posting 000760.txt from 1999/09

From: Shouryu Nohe <jnohe@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] Impresive ?
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 13:21:48 -0400

> In my opinion that is NOT a suggestion to give!
> Warming up should be taken seriously. One should sound competent when one
> plays, not
> when one is warming up.
> Warming-up is not showing off.

Keep in mind that in warming up, one should sound just as competent as one
does in playing already warmed up.

The staff at NMSU doesn't let me get away with ANYTHING when I'm warming
up - If I play a descending scale and the notes are uneven, my prof will
instruct me to do it over, and correctly (even if it's the very first
thing I play, to check if sound is coming out of my stick!). If the first
note I play isn't articulated correctly, I can't go on until I get it
right.

The attitude that forms this is one of: If you don't do your very best
in your first five minutes of playing, how can you expect to do your very
best in the first five minutes of a concert? If you warm up with
substandard playing in front of an audition panel, you are TOAST. The
first impression is the strongest, and as a result, the very first note of
your warm up should be as beautiful and musical and expressive as the last
note of the performance.

So in a sense, it IS showing off, but not showing off in the traditional
sense. A blues scale is a perfectly legitamate warm up (that sounded kind
of oxymoronic, didn't it?), if it is played with a good tone, emb., and
articulation from beginning to end. So is the finale from Weber
Concertino, or the opening to Mozart second mvt.

At least, that's the way I see it.

J. Shouryu Nohe
http://web.nmsu.edu/~jnohe
Professor of SCSM102, New Mexico State Univ.
"If I wanted a 'job,' I'd have gone music ED, thank you very much!"

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