Klarinet Archive - Posting 000101.txt from 2004/06

From: Tony Pay <tony.p@-----.org>
Subj: RE: [kl] glissando help
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 04:29:19 -0400

On 7 Jun, Nancy Buckman <eefer@-----.net> wrote:

> At 03:33 PM 6/2/2004, Josh 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.
>
> Josh's exercise is the best way I have seen to do this.

It's certainly the simplest example of how the note gets modified by the
shape of the inside of the mouth -- in this case, 'bent' downwards. Alf's
suggestion of using just the mouthpiece+barrel is another way of approaching
it, and my 'leaky tube' gives you a wider possible range of bending than the
fourth or fifth you can get from a straight high C, and leads on to the
glissando proper.

> I just returned from the Clarinet Symposium in Norman OK where Anne Lenoir
> taught me to do this. Watching her do it showed me how in quick order.

I have to say that although some students who can't do glissando have
responded to some small extent in a lesson, I've had little success with
getting immediate results even when I add demonstration to what little I can
say about what you do -- including what you do to bend the high C. The ones
that succeed in the end seem to do so at home, independently of my input.

And the thing is 'all of a piece' -- when you can do what's required in any
of the approaches, the rest is just refinement and practice, essentially.

So when you say:

> Watching her do it showed me how in quick order.

...that's the nub of the issue.

The question is, *how* did it show you? Can you remember what it was about
what she did that enabled you to catch on? Or was your experience a version
of what I describe happens with my students -- that is, you got lucky, but
in this case while you were being demonstrated to?

> Hearing people describe it for the last few years just wasn't very
> effective.

Perhaps, since it happened quite recently, you can help by describing, not
how you do it, but your experience of the *process of getting to do it* --
which most of us have forgotten.

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

... So... Is this seat taken?

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