Klarinet Archive - Posting 000026.txt from 2005/05

From: "Margaret Thornhill" <clarinetstudio@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] "2 person clarinet"
Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 12:09:07 -0400

Dan Fairheard wrote:
" If the"2 person clarinet" was supposed to "work" even with large
intervals,
always in tune, altissimo, etc, then that would mean I am _totally_
wrong in my very attempts to play better. But if it is limited -- in
that it helps the continuos blowing factor, but once beyond that
everything else is required -- then I can understand what's going on.
I just need to practice better. :-)"

Dan, I was the person who put the term "2 person clarinet" onto the list as
part of a discussion with Tony Pay. I quite agree with Tony's reply to you:
the point of this image is keeping the airstream independent of gross finger
motion. It is a teaching trick to prove a point, not a practicing regimen. I
like his term "first approximation"

"even trying to keep a steady airflow myself,
and not adjust air speed, mouth, etc, I find many notes being
out of tune, and when switching registers, or doing large jumps,
I get the wrong fundimental (I think this is the right word?) for
instance, fingering an altissimo g, but an alt. d comes out...
(For those notes and that whole area I often have to lip and
change airspeed to get the right note...)"

A useful way to improve your pitch in and strengthen your embouchure for the
altissimo register is simply to devote part of daily your practicing time to
pretending your instrument is a piccolo clarinet--pick a bunch of fairly
easy etudes, pieces, and transpose them all to the octave above the staff.
Try this 20 minutes a day for a week. It sounds ridciculously easy, but can
be quite taxing.(Taxing on your housemates, too!) Since I can't hear you, I
recommend this as a way to see if your embouchure can--(or help it learn
to)-- support extended playing in this register, and that will help the
large leaps as any time you have to make constant, conscious adjusting of
your lips for individual notes your legato is at risk. It's possible to play
in the two lower registers with a fairly slack embouchure and shallow air
support. It's not possibile to play the alitissimo register successfully
this way. In other words, my belief is that the norm should be for the
altissimo while playing throughout the clarinet, not some special trick we
have to manufacture every time we need a high note.
That said, of course we make tiny adjustments frequently, and tony's Y
clarinet--or something like it-- is a useful image even for the alt. d to g
thing.

Margaret Thornhill

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org