Klarinet Archive - Posting 000434.txt from 1999/11

From: Richard Bush <rbushidioglot@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Re: beginners' intonation/voicing
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 15:55:19 -0500

One of the greatest joys of making music is also being able to sing. This can be
in the shower, in church, in school or when riding a bicycle.

I can tell when my students can't sing. I ask them to sing and they get red in
the face. I ask them to match a pitch vocally and quite often they can't. Their
futures as instrumentalists are very much in question, at least in my mind.
Voicing, to me is setting up all of the symathetic body parts that would produce
a given pitch and then "singing" it through the instrument. At best, an
instrument is an acoustical extention. Ultimately, it should become an extention
of one's soul.

EbKlarinet@-----.com wrote:

> Hi all!!
>
> Georgette C. said:
> >>>>>>>>>>this girl will be grossly out of tune. Her playing is a half step
> pitch under. I have tried having her adjust her embouchure, experimented by
> changing
> barrels, even had her play on my clarinet. We still arrived at the same
> result. Next week we will experiment with a harder reed and different
> mouthpiece. Does anyone know how to solve this problem?>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>
> Lots of people responded with suggestions about equipment, embouchure, and
> etc, and only one person (David Blumberg) mentioned voicing (he didn't use
> that term--he mentioned using the inner smile and faster air.)
>
> So here's my question: are David and I the only people on the list who teach
> voicing as a fundamental part of clarinet tone production? By voicing, I
> refer to the shaping of the air column by the position of the tongue---high
> back tongue(inner smile) which speeds up the air and focuses it.
>
> When I saw Georgette's post, I immediately thought 'voicing'. I use voicing
> first with my beginners, using the tuner as David suggested, for visual
> feedback--an indicator of whether or not the tongue is high enough/air is
> fast enough. I only address embouchure after they have a good grasp of
> voicing, and I find that this works better than trying to have them do
> embouchure first.
>
> I often get students from other teachers who were not able to help them, and
> in almost every case, I find that they have no concept of voicing. This one
> element is what turns these kids around. I learned this from Tom Ridenour,
> btw. He has articles at his website on the subject, at <A
> HREF@-----.
>
> I would be very interested to get a survey of members of this list who do a
> substantial amount of teaching. Here's the form ( put an 'X' next to those
> which apply):
> ____teach embouchure
>
> ____teach voicing
>
> ____teach both
>
> ____other(you may elaborate, if you like)
>
> These questions refer to the tone production part of playing/teaching. You
> can send your responses to me or the list.
>
> Looking forward to hearing from you all!
>
> Elise Curran
> ENTJ
>
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