Klarinet Archive - Posting 000760.txt from 2000/11

From: "Karl Krelove" <kkrelove@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Feedback please. Article: Breathing/Relaxation
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2000 20:55:53 -0500

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dee D. Hays [mailto:deehays@-----.net]
>
> > ... When I am following a score it is a battle against
> > slow fingers and a fat tongue to play what it says. What I want
> > is to have
> > the same feeling when playing from a score as I have when I am just
> > "mucking
> > about". I try and keep in mind to play with the instrument and not fight
> > againt it.
> >
>
> Your fingers are no slower and your tongue no fatter with the score than
> without the score. It's just that you get uptight playing from a score at
> this point in time. That can create tension throughout your body leading
> the the misperception that the tongue and fingers are fat or slow. Most
> people's tongues and fingers have plenty of speed to burn if they
> could only
> learn to relax.
>
> Dee Hays

The other side of this is that when we're "mucking about" we tend to go with
our strengths and avoid our weaknesses (or what we think are our
weaknesses). The tension enters as the demands of conforming to a written
score force us to deal with areas of our playing we aren't so comfortable
with.

One of the areas we tend to think less about when we're just noodling is
breathing. I was taught and still try to practice and use the kind of
breathing technique that Neil described when he began this thread. It's
always seemed to me, though, that most of it's necessity comes from the need
to play in large ensembles in large halls where projection, volume and
intensity of tone have a great deal of importance. One of the anomalies I've
always wondered about is that I can be much more relaxed and achieve greater
ease while breathing shallowly (incorrectly by both my teacher's and Neil's
standard) in my small practice studio than I can breathing correctly in a
large auditorium playing with a big orchestra. Without argument, when I am
conscious of breathing "correctly" my tension level is much lower than when
I'm not. But I don't think the entire source of tension for me is my
breathing technique - it's elsewhere, somewhere above my respiratory
apparatus, and I need to use other techniques to combat it. This is not to
argue against Neil's description of well-controlled breathing or his
exposition of its importance to good playing. Just the suggestion that,
while tension is certainly the main problem for most of us, breathing
technique may not be the entire solution for everyone.

Karl Krelove

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