Klarinet Archive - Posting 000029.txt from 2004/06

From: Tony Pay <tony.p@-----.org>
Subj: RE: [kl] glissando help
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 16:49:29 -0400

On 2 Jun, "Josh Gardner" <jtgardner@-----.com> wrote:

> A nice little exercise that I have used in the past involves playing a note
> and trying to voice the pitch down different intervals. High C is a good
> note to begin this exercise. Start with a half step. Play a B natural to
> get the pitch in your head and then try to voice the pitch down using not
> the embouchure but the position of the tongue. Next, go down a whole step
> and so on. This skill will help your ability to grossly alter the tongue
> position in order to blur notes together when glissing.

Yes, I think this an excellent exercise -- and part of it I've used myself.
But I never tried stretching larger intervals. I just fingered F# and played
F, fingered G and played F#, and so on.

> It is the very same concept as whistling. The pitch is altered by the
> change in air speed created by the altered positions of the tongue.

I don't know that this explanation is correct. I think it more likely that
it isn't the airspeed, but rather the resonance of the altered cavity behind
the reed that influences the pitch.

> In my experience, a gliss is best produced when the tongue is positioned
> too low for the fingered pitch and the fingers either play a chromatic
> scale or they gradually slide off. The tongue is raised at the very end of
> the gliss to raise the pitch to the desired note.

My own experience is that the precise details of the fingerings aren't
crucial. What's more important is that there is some 'leaky tube' outside
that can support whatever resonance is being chosen inside the mouth.

> As Bryan said, it is much more difficult to type an explanation rather than
> demonstrate it.

I tried Bryan's suggestions, and found that they made sense, *to me*. But
the thing is, I can already do a glissando; and he mentions nothing about
tongue positions, which are what I think are the most important aspect of
glissando.

The difficulty is that if you can already do a glissando, it's easy to think
that you aren't doing anything inside your mouth, and that helpful
suggestions about the embouchure are crucial. That's because your tongue
movements just aren't accessible to you, consciously.

But, in my view, they're the most important thing.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd tony.p@-----.org
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE http://classicalplus.gmn.com/artists
tel/fax 01865 553339

... I think not, said Descartes; and promptly vanished.

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