Klarinet Archive - Posting 000236.txt from 2001/11

From: Virginia Anderson <assembly1@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Re: klarinet Digest 4 Nov 2001 21:15:01 -0000 Issue 3434
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 09:04:35 -0500

on 5/11/01 9:15 pm, HatNYC62@-----.com wrote:

> My comments were related to someone who is learning to play in a sort of
> vacuum, in other words at a school where the opportunities for truly first
> class performances is limited. Northwestern, where I went, was in many ways
> such a place. Other schools are even more limited.
>
<snip>

> Playing scales and arpeggios ad nauseum is not my idea of fun. I do it every
> day because I know if I spend an hour every day doing it, there will be few
> works that I won't be able to simply sightread when they are placed in front
> of me. The amount of time I have to practice a work of repertoire is very
> small compared to when I was much younger. Spend some time in one place to
> save time in another.
>
> In fact, I have never enjoyed practicing much either.
>
After my first year at university it was very hard to keep scales and etudes
in my practice time, partly because I messed about with reeds too much,
partly because playing commitments ensured that the material itself had to
be practiced. We had two orchestras (community and chamber), band, a new
music ensemble with four programmes of solo and chamber work to fill,
required recital and wind class commitments, paid gigs and student-designed
ensembles and recording projects, in addition to a couple of solo recitals
and work on others' recitals. Working in a vacuum seems kind of alien.

There is a need for technical work, though. What I did do was to spend part
of most summers working on scales and arpeggios almost exclusively: kind of
a scale camp. I've done this off and on since I was 14, and would be a
decent player if I had done this every year. Exercises can be meditatively
hypnotic if done in the right frame of mind, with a similar good
"endorphin-like" feeling as that mentioned by joggers when one is done (of
course, the cessation of hitting one's heat with a ball-peen hammer is
equally enjoyable, I'd imagine).

Just to be evil, I'll tell you something my former uni. friend Marty Walker
and I did when we needed more playing time but could not face the isolation
and were thoroughly sick of practicing. He had a stack of clarinet duet
books and we'd play a game called "cut-throat clarinet", kind of a musical
version of the party game "Pass Out". We would play through these duets
(good sight-reading practice and good for the stamina) and if one of us made
a mistake he or she would take a drink of beer (well, since I was
technically less gifted Marty would often take a swig in sympathy). After a
few hours of this the duets would fall apart. But it was highly enjoyable
and one way of getting the clarinets into every niche of our lives.

Cheers,

Virginia
--
Virginia Anderson
Leicester, UK
<vanderson@-----.uk>
Experimental Music Catalogue: <http://www.experimentalmusic.co.uk>
...experimental music since 1969....

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