Klarinet Archive - Posting 000048.txt from 2008/01

From: Tony Pay <tony.p@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] more legato
Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2008 12:57:30 -0500

On 4 Jan, Margaret Thornhill <clarinetstudio@-----.com> wrote:

> I must have misremembered an online conversation we had in the past.

Well, I went and looked, and the relevant bit of mine (8/04/05, so longer
ago than you thought:-) was:

> The usefulness of the 'slow finger' legato teaching metaphor has nothing to
> do with how the action of the finger affects legato. That's very much a
> second order effect. It is simply a psychological device to distract the
> attention of the player from his or her airstream, so that that can
> continue through the change. (Actually, there is a further wrinkle, but
> leave that aside for the moment.)
>
> Why most people fail to have an effective legato is that they change the
> airstream between one note and another, thinking that they have to *create*
> a legato.
>
> I have my own metaphor for avoiding that; see:
>
> http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/1998/09/000993.txt
>
> ...but I can see why the 'slow finger' metaphor helps.

Unfortunately I've forgotten what the 'further wrinkle' was, but I can see
how you can think of that passage as a 'sort of' vote for LF.

And actually, when you say that I 'teach' it -- in a way I sometimes do,
because I find it useful, when explaining things, to call attention to the
various ways of approaching a particular difficulty.

So I sometimes say, do you know that some American teachers approach the idea
of minimising mouth-resonance (small cavity) by talking about using 'fast
air' -- ie, air that has to go over an arched tongue, which obviously gives
rise to the same sort of mouth geometry. Or, that they talk about having a
pointed chin, or double-lip embouchure -- or that they talk about backswing
in legato, or...you get the idea.

Because, I think it's important to make the student at least *potentially*
'bigger' than the advice, even if I might demand of a student that they
practise one particular exercise that I can see applies to their case.

Tony
--

_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE
tel/fax 01865 553339
mobile +44(0)7790 532980 tony.p@-----.org

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