Klarinet Archive - Posting 000255.txt from 2001/09

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Long tone discussion again, and an exercise
Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2001 07:44:08 -0400

On Thu, 6 Sep 2001 23:08:04 EDT, HatNYC62@-----.com said:

> I wanted to reprint here what I recently posted on the BB about my
> feelings re: long tones vs. scales.

I think this is very sound advice.

Another way of putting it is to say that quite a large proportion of a
good player's expertise and expressiveness lies in their control of how
they go from one note to another. That involves not just how they play
the intervals occurring in scales, but how they play other intervals
too.

In the chapter 'the technique of playing the clarinet' in the Cambridge
Companion, I published a small exercise that I still find invaluable in
my own playing.

It comes in two parts:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Part one:

||: 4/4 LMHM LMHM LMHM LMHM 6/16 LMH LMH 5/16 LMH LM 4/4 HMLM HMLM HMLM
HMLM 6/16 HML HML 5/16 HML HM :||

Part two:

||: 4/4 MHML MHML MHML MHML 6/16 MHL MHL 5/16 MHL MH 4/4 MLMH MLMH MLMH
MLMH 6/16 MHL MHL 5/16 MHL MH :||

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

In the above, the ||: and :|| at the beginning and the end are repeat
signs;

4/4, 6/16 and 5/16 are time-signatures;

L, M and H are three notes of duration one semiquaver, L being the
lowest pitch, M the middle pitch, and H the highest pitch. They are
beamed as grouped.

It all lies under one slur, and semiquaver equals semiquaver throughout.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the passage that accompanies the exercise in the Cambridge
Companion:

"Consider further the analogy with speech. We habitually place a
tremendous variety of delicate emphases on the syllables of the words we
utter. On the other hand, much of the traditional study of an
instrument is devoted to the discipline of producing a consistently even
sound in all registers, and between notes. Now, whilst it is true that
a variation in something can be meaningful only in the context of it
being possible for that something to remain unchanged, we seldom need to
play passages completely evenly, just as we very seldom speak completely
evenly. One of the characteristics of excellent playing is that the
player has control of the microstructure of the variation in timbre or
dynamic between notes. This control is what makes evident the
organisation of the notes into groups. It may not be perceived directly
by the listener, who may simply think of it as 'good rhythm',
'brilliance', or 'eloquence' even in a running passage that seems even.

"For example, a part of what is required to play the second movement of
Stravinsky‘s Three Pieces for Clarinet is to make the first semiquaver
passage both phrased as marked (by the slurs) and grouped as marked (by
the beaming, in threes). To do this naturally is made a little awkward
by the leaps involved, but even in the easy bits it can be elusive to
show the threes without labouring the point. It is clear that we must
show them, too, because a little later some of the notes recur in a
different grouping, and an audible difference between the two structures
must therefore be intended.

"But almost any semiquaver passage needs to be structured in some way.
Notes are not all of equal importance, and although it is a matter for a
performer to determine on any particular occasion exactly where what we
might call the resonances of the passage need to fall, some such
hierarchy is always established. When we have established it, we might
say that we *understand* the passage better.

"What we want is the general ability to group the notes in the same
natural way that we group syllables into words in speech; which is to
say, not obviously but nevertheless intelligibly. A good move may well
be to think of some words that we can imagine go with the passage, and
check that our playing has the same character. This trick has a long
pedigree, and I for one would like to see and hear it more used. When
it is successful, it puts us in a much better position to articulate
whatever understanding of a passage we may possess.

"Of course, the clarinet differs from the spoken voice: it may 'fight
back' when we want it to do something. A note that we want to be
resonant for musical reasons may, on the instrument, be one of the
weakest; and the opposite also occurs, perhaps to our even greater
discomfiture. But as I said earlier, we are not dealing just with a
clarinet. We ourselves are a part of the system, clarinet plus player,
and we can learn to overcome the difficulty ™ even when we play on
period instruments, which have more uneven scales. Sometimes, of
course, we are fortunate here, and can use the 'deficiency' of the
instrument to expressive effect.

"The following simple exercise helps us in the direction of being able
to emulate on the instrument the ability we have, when we speak,
unconsciously to control dynamic and timbral variation. The idea is
that the exercise is a sort of template that we use to create our own
studies from the piece of music we are playing. There is no conventional
stave, because the three notes are intended to be any three notes, in
ascending order. Neither is there a tempo indication, because we want
to be able to use it in an intelligent way, at varying tempi according
to our needs. Semiquaver equals semiquaver throughout. To apply the
exercise, we choose three consecutive notes of the passage and put them
in ascending order. We may choose these three notes because they have
different responses, or because one or more of them needs to be
stressed, or simply because they feel or sound awkward as we play them.
As we perform the exercise, we listen with the intention of having the
result be both even and modulated. (If we use the trick of using words
to help us imagine this, we may come up with something rather like
millimetre-millimetre-millimetre-millimetre-metronome-metronome-
metronome-micro-, repeated over and over again. You are encouraged to
write your own libretto!) The important point is to achieve an
equilibrium between the long legato and the substructure, a relationship
rather like that of waves to a calmish sea. Notice that in the first
part of the exercise, the first and third notes each get their turn to
be the most resonant or loudest, whilst in the second part, the second
note is the only one emphasised.

"Usually the complete passage we are studying will require only one of
the various organisations of the three notes that these exercises
create. In my view, though, it is almost always a good principle to
study, in addition to what we ultimately want to achieve, the
alternatives that lie close by. In this way the exercise has its own
life, and the original passage does not seem stale when we return to it.

"As we experiment, it should become apparent that there are at least two
things that can change to show the substructure, these being timbre and
dynamic.

"The control of the first is best thought of as done by a change of
resonance ™ I often like to imagine that prominent notes have the
quality of being played on a marimbaphone, and the others on a
xylophone. Doubtless we obtain such effects by making almost
imperceptible movements of the mouth and tongue. The details of this
are best left to be trained by our ear as in speech, especially since we
want the process ultimately to be unconscious; though it is worth
experimenting with the effect of making mouth shapes corresponding to
different vowels to begin with. Sometimes strange vowels have strange
effects (like multiphonics) ™ but trying new things out always tends to
expand our range of possibilities.

"The control of dynamic occurs via the technique of support we mentioned
earlier. As before, this works best when *allowed* to occur.

"What we are learning is to play unevenly, but in the way we want. The
slightly tricky rhythm of the exercise is intentional; while what
Timothy Gallwey calls Self One is coping with this, we can learn the
really complicated stuff despite ourselves. (See The Inner Game of
Tennis (Random House, 1974), which one top flight violin soloist calls
"the best book about violin playing I know". It‘s pretty good for
clarinet players too!) There is also an important effect when we return
to the passage itself. We experience a release into a less demanding
environment. Exercises we create for ourselves should always have this
quality of being both simpler and more complex than the passage they are
designed to improve.

"It is worth adding that as we play the exercise (or the passage)
faster, we will do better if we are modulating a brighter basic timbre.
This is because faster music needs a sound with more higher frequencies
in it to sound as clear as slower music, for a given acoustic. Lower
frequencies persist longer, and muddy the change from one note to the
next unless the higher partials, which die faster, form a
non-overlapping sequence. This is also why we find we need softer reeds
in a very resonant acoustic."

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

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