Klarinet Archive - Posting 000125.txt from 2009/03

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Rhapsody in Blue
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 07:45:18 -0400

MICHAEL MARMER LINDA MARMER wrote:
> This is from a professional trombonist in the Chicago area.
>
> Mike Marmer
>
> It is not a "rip" Is IS a Glissando. It's done by gradually removing
> fingers covering the holes. ANY Clarinet teacher can help her with this.
> All serious HS & College students practice this constantly. It is one of
> the required excerpts for all professional Clarinet auditions.

Well, this kind of suggests to me that the trombonist actually doesn't
understand what the problem is ... :-)

The comment about 'not a rip, a glissando' is interesting because of
course 'rip' has a very specific meaning for brass players which is very
different from the 'slide' effect of a glissando on trombone or clarinet.

But apart from that it doesn't seem to me to actually give you a lot of
info on how to solve the problem. You _do_ slide fingers during gliss,
but it's not the dominant part of how you actually perform an effective
glissando -- it just looks that way to anyone watching. It's the tongue
that actually has principal control of the slide.

I just tested my own 'Rhapsody' gliss a few times and found that in fact
once I'd started the gliss by creating the 'leaky tube' that Tony P.
speaks of in the link I posted, I could remove my fingers _entirely_
without affecting anything.

The problem is that now I have the tongue movement right I actually
can't easily go back to what I was doing when I was first trying to play
that gliss. But I do remember that I spent ages and ages trying to
create the effect by sliding fingers off slowly one by one, which was
kind of what had been described to me as 'what to do', without any success.

Then one day something just 'clicked' and I suddenly found myself able
to perform the gliss reliably. I had no idea what I was doing but it
was quite apparent that the fingers _weren't_ in control, it was more
like the fingers had 'handed control over' to something else which I
wasn't consciously aware of but would do what I wanted.

Tony P.'s comments about the 'leaky tube' were kind of a 'eureka!'
moment because it finally clicked that this was indeed what I was doing
-- sliding my fingers off (all) the keys just enough to create tiny
gaps, which lets the tongue take over control of pitch.

I'm still buggered if I know what my tongue is _actually_ doing during
all this, but that's less important than knowing that I can give it
control via this 'leaky' technique, and then it can sort things out for
itself.

-- Joe

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