Klarinet Archive - Posting 000053.txt from 2002/09

From: w8wright@-----.net (William Wright)
Subj: RE: [kl] Support?
Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 11:33:40 -0400

<><> Karl=A0Krelove wrote:
If I understand you correctly, it's the octave leap that's the problem,
not the range of notes or the individual response of any other note.

I shouldn't have spoken in absolute terms about maintenance. My fault.

However the same thing happened to me a year ago. At first, I began to
have difficulties in the altissimo register, and I told myself: "Bill,
you need to pay more attention....." But then problems began to appear
lower down, and eventually I realized that I had an equipment problem.

What *really* surprised me was that I had made my own attempt to
identify a leak or to spot some 'gunk', and I found nothing wrong.
After the technician replaced a pad and two cork joints and adjusted a
key and cleaned the register tube, chalumeau notes played so easily that
I realized how much (unnecessary) work I had been doing in order to play
anything, high or low!

So --- like the joke about taking a bath every six months --- I made a
resolve to take my instrument to the technician once a year whether it
needs maintenance it or not!

Taking a second look at your message, when you asked "How do you supply
(and how do you know that you are supplying) enough breath support to
reach those altissimo sounds?", I'd like to mention that breath support
is not just blowing hard on a particular note. Breath support includes
constant air movement without interruption at the end of a note.

When the leap is a full 12th (rather than an octave), one of the
standard exercises is to play a chalumeau long tone, and then ask
someone else to open the register key for you without warning. This
gives you the 'feel' of what it's like to slur a full register without
changing your breath support between notes, and you can apply the same
'feel' to leaps of other sizes.

Cheers,
Bill

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