Klarinet Archive - Posting 000007.txt from 1999/11

From: David Glenn <notestaff@-----.de>
Subj: Re: [kl] re: Blowing with no fingers
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 03:04:46 -0500

Tony Pay schrieb:

> -snip-
>
> And I tried this out for myself, on the clarinet. Indeed, you can feel
> the vibration of the aircolumn through your fingers, and the vibration
> of the reed on your lip. Concentrating on these sensations seems to
> move your address to the instrument in the direction of *letting it
> vibrate* rather than blowing it -- which is what you want, of course.
>
> Students report that they find it helpful, too.
>
> The effect that David reports above -- that students feel the vibration
> on their lips more when they don't have to finger -- is also
> interesting. Perhaps it's a special case of the notion that when you do
> something out of its usual context, you tend to bring a different sort
> of awareness to the situation, and so aspects that were just 'normal'
> before tend to jump out at you.
>
> A good example of this for me is the experience of playing the clarinet
> in the low register with right and left hands reversed. The instrument
> seems to sound completely different!
>
> And better!
>
> Try it:-)
>
> Tony
> --
> _________ Tony Pay
> |ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
> | |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
> tel/fax 01865 553339
>
> ... Let's organize this thing and take all the fun out of it.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I often have my pupils try to imagine that the clarinet is a lovely long neck
of a singing bird (stolen idea from Havas). If they grip hard it doesn't
sing. (It's fun to imitate the "singing" bird) A too tight metal ligature has
a similar effect. In the future, I'll make sure that I more often try to make
them concretely aware of the vibration. I often mention that certain
registers vibrate in certain places of the body but I'm not always sure how
much the pupil experiences this. Maybe your idea with changing the hands will
help. I'll try it too!

I do have pupils hold each others or my clarinet and feel the vibrations like
that. They can also kill the vibrations by holding too tight. But there's
been a discussion on that...

David

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