Klarinet Archive - Posting 001373.txt from 2000/04

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Non-standard fingerings, trills, voicing
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 10:00:51 -0400

On Sat, 29 Apr 2000 23:25:45 -0700, jonsmith@-----.net said:

> On Fri, 28 Apr 2000 22:20:33 EDT, OrionDJ12@-----.com said:
>
> > In one of my peices of music, I have a very hard "A" to "B" trill.
> > Is there an easier way to trill besides going from one finger to all
> > down?
>
> What about using the right hand side keys in addition to the A? It's
> the very top one I think, maybe the top two. Not a perfect sound, but
> it's the only way to trill.

I had in fact suggested previously:

> Play the B as usual, but then *add* the throat A key with the one
> finger you mention. (This finger is then covering the top LH hole and
> opening the A key simultaneously, which you never do normally, but
> isn't too hard to arrange.) The B is almost unaffected by the A key
> being opened.
>
> Now trill with your *right-hand* first finger.

This is quite an 'extreme' example, but shows that even the modern
clarinet is more unpredictable than your, "it's the only way to trill"
implies.

On period instruments, where each individual clarinet has its own
quirks, you have to be creative about trill fingerings -- even creative
about fingerings in general -- in order to get the results, particularly
in fast passagework. And even on modern instruments, you can sometimes
find an easier solution to a technical problem than the standard one.
Abe Galper just posted such a solution to the 'Gipsy Baron' problem
passage, for example.

Another thing. I haven't tried Abe's solution yet, but if I had to play
the Gipsy Baron, I'd certainly spend quite a lot of time working not
only on his suggestion, but on any others I might be able to come up
with myself.

Why? Because, *even if in the end I were to decide to play it using the
standard fingering*, I know that such experimentation 'fixes' the
structure of a passage itself in my mind in a way that is independent of
any one particular fingering. And that sort of representation of the
structure of the passage is certainly an aid to, and may be essential
for, security and consistency.

A trumpet player friend of mine once developed a 'thing' about the solo
in Petrushka, so that he started to worry much more than usual every
time he had to play it, and it got worse. (It's the one that goes,
diddle-dee, diddle-dah, diddle-dai, diddle-dah, diddle
diddle-iddle-iddle-iddle iddle-iddle-dah, etc etc, if you follow me:-)

What he did over a period of a couple of weeks to get out of it was: he
wrote it out in different keys, he played it in different keys on the
trumpet, he played it on the piano, he sang it, he practised it on the
recorder...

In the 'different fingerings' case that I was talking about, perhaps
also while practising them we learn more efficiently the subtle
movements of the tongue that are so important in passagework -- what I
called 'voicing' before, Audrey. Non-standard fingerings sometimes
require more precision in this than standard ones, so when we play at
speed with the standard fingering a 'difficult' note may be helped to
resonate better by the more accurate tongue placement we learned in the
'non-standard' practice. (We might have been too stuck in the fingering
difficulty in the 'standard' practice to allow that to happen.)

Just to round off -- do we all know 'Stadler's fingering' for clarion
Bb? Quite a godsend on the old instrument, but works on the modern one,
and very useful for the Berio sequenza:

....finger long C# just above the break, and lift the LH third finger.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE www.gmn.com/artists/welcome.asp
tel/fax 01865 553339

.... A single fact can spoil a good argument.
.

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