Brought to you this hour by

Advertising and Web Hosting on Woodwind.Org!

Klarinet Archive - Posting 000050.txt from 2008/01

From: Tony Pay <tony.p@-----.org>
Subj: RE: [kl] more legato
Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:40:19 -0500

On 4 Jan, "Keith Bowen" <bowenk@-----.com> wrote:

> Tony,
>
> > 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.
>
> Could you expand on why the need to minimize mouth-resonance (small
> cavity)? I had thought that the aim would be to match the resonance of the
> mouth (etc) with that of the clarinet note, to maximize the energy transfer
> to the clarinet, ie to make the tone sound efficiently.

You want to match that resonance if you're playing a throat Bb, sure, and
even to hang an appropriate length of resonant tube below the business bit
-- a resonance fingering; but not if, for example, you're playing the opening
of the Mozart clarinet quintet, where the open G sticks out in the arpeggios
if you have too large a mouth cavity. Better there to have it too small.

I should say that I have very little knowledge of how 'fast air' is actually
used in American pedagogy, so I content myself in general with having tongue
position as a variable that I allow to influence the sound without knowing
exactly how -- as when we speak:-)

Tony
--

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

... Star Trek XXVII - The Search for Shatner's Teeth.

------------------------------------------------------------------