Klarinet Archive - Posting 000048.txt from 1999/11

From: "Rien Stein" <rstein@-----.nl>
Subj: [kl] Re: Dutch
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 18:56:10 -0500

David Glenn asked me:

>Hey thanks, Rien!

>Do you REALLY say "octaafklep"?! Don't you have another (correcter) word.
Let
>me guess: twaalfdeklep?, overblasklep?....

>I've also heard "rietje" for reed. Which is more common, "riet" or
"rietje"?

>What I meant with gig was a job, not the type of music! Did I spell it
wrong?
>Would you say (I'm guessing again): "baantje"? Funny that the word for job
and
>the word for lay are the same (baan)!

>haartelijk bedankt!

>David

Dear David

Although I agree with you the name "octaafklep" sounds funny for a key that
makes one overblow to the twelfths, I never heard or read any other Dutch
word for the register key, although I did read once an author who actually
stated that "duodecimeklep" would be a better name. I think it was in the
book "De Klarinet" by Den Elzenaar, but I'm not very sure about that. I
remember this, because I had only recently before started to learn the
clarinet, and it was one of the first interval names I met. (In the field of
music theory I am completely autodidactic, and thus don't know very much
about it). BTW "to overblow" in Dutch is "overblazen", a word we split:
I overblow = ik blaas over

As to your second question: "rietje" is the diminuetive form of "riet", and
thus means "small reed". Both forms are used for all kinds of reed
instruments, so whether you play Es sopranino saxophone or double bass
clarinet ("contrabasklarinet"), if you take a new reed, you can both say:

"ik pak een nieuw riet" or "ik pak een nieuw rietje"

One of my youth loves was (and still is) called Rietje, that however is a
different name from Riet!

As for "gig": I had to look that up in my translator's dictionary (I am not
a translator, as you will have understood from the English of my mailings),
and found that the musical intention in Dutch is "jamsessie". Pronounce
"jam" the English way, not the Indonesian.

Finally, you asked me about the word "baan". It is a word with many
meanings, one of them is job. And, to get personal, I have been hunting for
a "baan" the last 4 1/2 year, in vain, and decided two weeks ago, after a
visit to a job"s fair, that at my age that is absolutely useless: there is
no company, that will accept a 56-years old man, despite three masters
degrees: M.Sc. of Mechanical Engineering, 1970, M.Sc. (or is it an M.A?) of
Psychology, 1980, and M.Sc. of Computer Science, 1990. But back to baan.

The most general meaning of "baan" is something like "track": een renbaan is
a racing track, een rijbaan is a driving lane, a street prostitute has gone
onto the "baan", children glide down a "glijbaan" (slide, pronounce somehow
like "khlajbahn"). I think it is in this sense that you must interpret the
origine of the name "baan" for lay.

Hope you enjoyed this rather long mail.

Rien

PS Although Prins bernard, the husband of our former queen Juliana,
pronounces it as "Haartelijk bedankt", the correct spelling and
pronunciation for "thanks a lot" are "hartelijk bedankt"

Rien

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From: act_dumb@-----.com
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 15:16:24 -0800
X-Priority: Normal
Subject: [donax-m] Lip and cheek gymnasium

In a message dated 11/1/99 12:56:48 PM, vincent.wallace@-----.ie
writes:

> Are there any useful exercises for strengthening lip and / or cheek
> muscles apart from actual playing, e.g. while driving?

I read the responses thus far to this question, and personally
I think the correct answer is "not really." Well, maybe that's
a little premature, after two seconds of further consideration.
I don't believe that puffing your cheeks and forcing the air
out with facial muscles will produce the desired effect. But
something that comes to mind -- that can also literally be done
while driving -- involves having your clarinet mouthpiece in
hand while you drive. Many players associate embouchure-
strengthening exercises with some form of blowing, but this
need not be the case. One of the primary embouchure problems
involves pinching of the reed by the jaw, and many players
never realize that the jaw should have nothing to do with
playing the clarinet. It should be dropped as far away from
the reed as possible to enable maximum vibration. In order
to do this and achieve a good controlled sound, the muscles
around the face need to be developed in a very specific way
to support the reed with a cushiony lower lip while regulating
the speed and contour of the air stream. Long tones are a com-
mon method for developing those muscles in the right way. A
variation on long tones is to remove the mouthpiece from the
clarinet, keep the reed on it, and simply form a correct em-
bouchure without blowing. Instead, the idea is to sustain
the correct embouchure configuration for as long as you can.
This includes dropping the jaw, pushing in from the sides,
pressing down with the bottom lip, and pointing the chin
downward and forward. Believe it or not, this can be a
serious challenge. The embouchure muscles can tire out
pretty quickly when they're forced to retain the correct
position. At a stoplight, you can do the exercise while
looking in your inside rear-view mirror to check how the
embouchure looks. If you repeat this exercise multiple
times over the course of a day, you will notice a markedly
different sensation in your embouchure by the time you're
ready to actually produce a note on the clarinet. The
muscles are literally receiving a workout when you practice
the correct embouchure on the mouthpiece. When you actually
blow through the mouthpiece into your clarinet, the embouchure
may not retain its correct configuration. Like I said, the
muscles get tired, and adding the air stream to the equation
makes achievement of a correct embouchure an even greater
challenge. Over time, it will become easier to sustain the
correct configuration, both with just the mouthpiece, as well
as when blowing into the instrument. Combine the exercise
with some long-tone exercises on the clarinet, and you'll
be on your way to discovering how to relax your well-developed
embouchure and allow the air stream to do all of the work.

Work on this and see if you notice a difference.

-- Neil

LookSmart @-----.
http://www.looksmart.com

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