Klarinet Archive - Posting 000547.txt from 2002/07

From: Neil Leupold <leupold_1@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Suggestions
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2002 10:33:56 -0400

--- Ragnhild Kristine Brekke <rkbrek99@-----.no> wrote:

> Yeah, they do, I use them and love them myself! But won't correct the
> problem of biting, they'll just prevent the mouthpiece from being destroyed
> by it.

Sometimes a slight alteration in the feel or configuration of a "setup", be
that setup a mouthpiece, a tennis racket, the steering wheel of a car, etc.,
can spark a spontaneous change in approach that turns out to be highly bene-
ficial. It has the possibility of dislodging a person's mentality from a
psychological rut...one that has prevented them from taking their technique
to the next level for want of a stimulus to demonstrate that pehaps doing it
differently could improve what may or may not be working well already. The
addition of a mouthpiece patch has this type of potential. The ever so slight
increase in the distance that one must drop their jaw in order to accommodate
the thickness of a patch can have a sudden and profound effect on a player's
perception of their own embouchure, as well as how they use their oral cav-
ity in general, especially if they've never used a patch before. In some
cases, it can make the player acutely aware of their tendency to bite, to
maintain the jaw in a more closed position than might be optimal relative
to tone control and reed vibration.

This sort of thing doesn't happen to everybody, but everybody, in all of their
activities, are sensitive and susceptible to the influences of small changes
in how their equipment feels during an activity in which they have developed a
"tactile routine" or tactile familiarity, as it were. A small epiphany in per-
ception relative to the embouchure, especially in somebody who is naturally in-
clined to explore analogous implications elsewhere in their technique by log-
ical extension, can lead to remarkable and seemingly spontaneous leaps forward
in overall ability.

Technical progress on the clarinet can sometimes be likened to a frog leaping
from lily pad to lily pad in a pond. You figure out how to play consistently
at some level, in some estimation, which serves the purpose for the moment, and
you stay there for a while because it seems to work. The frog has leapt to a
lily pad and is comfortably afloat -- he stays put for a bit. The player exper-
iences a subtle change of some kind in how their equipment -- or their approach
to their equipment -- feels, and might choose to explore that difference of sen-
sation, making a semi-permanent adjustment that results in an advance of tech-
nical ability, be it finger dexterity, tone production, articulation, what have
you. The frog has hopped to the next adjacent lily pad, and may or may not stay
there as long as the first one. Perhaps longer. And so it goes.

Sometimes it's healthy to shake things up as part of the routine itself, just to
ensure that we haven't become overly comfortable with ourselves, with our equipment,
or with our perception of a given state of being. 'Funny how becoming a better mu-
sician parallels certain universals in life. All of that from a mouthpiece patch. :-)

Neil

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